AI Is Still an Unknown Country — and Teens Are Its Pioneers
Maggie Hicks
June 13, 2025
New study suggests adolescents worry about using AI ethically, but they don’t know what the rules are.
When artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT were first introduced for public use in 2022, Gillian Hayes, vice provost for academic personnel at the University of California, Irvine, remembers how people were setting up rules around AI without a good understanding of what it truly was or how it would be used.
The moment felt akin to the industrial or agricultural revolutions, Hayes says.
“People were just trying to make decisions with whatever they could get their hands on.”
Seeing a need for more and clearer data, Hayes and her colleague Candice L. Odgers, a professor of psychological science and informatics at UC Irvine, launched a national survey to investigate the use of AI among teens, parents and educators. Their goal was to collect a broad set of data that could be used to continuously investigate how uses and attitudes toward AI shift over time.
