Adolescents want privacy, not just accuracy, from health AI tools

A newly-published study sheds light on how adolescents perceive artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare, offering vital insight into how the next generation navigates the promises and pitfalls of AI-driven health tools. Published in the Proceedings of the 2025 Computer-Human Interaction (CHI) Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems under the title “Understanding Adolescents’ Perceptions of Benefits and Risks in Health AI Technologies through Design Fiction” (Jamie Lee, Kyuha Jung, Erin Gregg Newman, Emilie Chow, and Yunan Chen), the research explores a demographic often overlooked in discussions about medical technology: teenagers.

Researchers employed design fiction to survey 16 adolescents, aged 13 to 17, in speculative scenarios involving AI-powered health technologies. These fictional vignettes covered both clinical and personal health contexts – from ambient scribes recording medical appointments to chatbot therapists simulating human empathy. Through these interactive interviews, the study revealed nuanced opinions shaped by trust, privacy concerns, perceived benefits, and adolescent-specific expectations.

Learn more in an article published by Devdiscourse.

The ICS Informatics Department has a large and exciting presence at this year’s CHI conference, the premier international conference in the field. CHI 2025 will take place in Yokohama, Japan beginning April 26, where Informatics department faculty, postdocs, and students will present on novel research in areas including: bias around autism in large language models, AI recommendations for children, designing conversational AI for aging, how blind people use generative AI tools for information access, games and interactive design in museums, adolescent perceptions in health AI technologies, mental wellbeing and support tools with Taiwanese emerging adults, and more. The full list of papers and articles is available on the Informatics department site.