Governing artificial intelligence use in academia: A virtue-based governance perspective

Abstract

The global academia is racing to craft regulations to govern the use of generative AI (GenAI). Yet, most policies and regulatory principles in GenAI governance are top-down and risk-averse, leaving the questions of ethics of users underexplored. By situating the “ethical use” at the center of the AI governance discourse, this article asks (i) how learners perceive the ethicality of GenAI use, and (ii) what considerations shape their decision to use GenAI ethically. Drawing on the Aristotelian virtue ethics theory as sensitizing tool and using data from nine focus groups of learners ( n  = 33) from a publicly funded university, we derived a Five-Rights Framework of Virtue Based GenAI Governance : right actions (ethical use cases), right outcomes (outcomes gained from using), right beliefs (new moral virtues of open-minded caution and intellectual autonomy), right approaches (technical skills and techno-practical wisdom), and right community (peer influences, usage policy). The analyses also revealed that (1) negative outcomes of using GenAI came from deficits in the right ways of using and technical skills; (2) the willingness to declare the use of GenAI is influenced by social stigma and the lack of fair and transparent detection regimes; and (3) peers’ attitudes influence the use or refusal of GenAI. The study advances GenAI governance scholarship by contributing a blueprint of a “virtue-based” governance regime, offering evidence-based and theoretically informed governance suggestions in global academia concerning the ethical use of GenAI.