Software engineering (SE) research is increasingly focusing on AI for SE. Yet, the community also raises major concerns about how AI is developed, deployed, and used. Trustworthy AI (TAI) offers a framework to address these concerns through lawful, ethical, and robust AI across the AI lifecycle. In this study, we analyze ICSE-FOSE 2026 survey responses to characterize the SE community’s opinion on AI in SE, and to examine how the expressed concerns align with potential ethical value breaches and TAI lifecycle tasks. Results show a largely negative opinion of AI in SE. Reported issues map to 17 ethical values, with the strongest concentration on problems arising during AI use rather than during model development and deployment. These findings suggest an urgent need for actionable guidance and research on the ethical use of AI in SE practice to address technical and ethical shortcomings and strengthen trust in AI-enabled SE.

@inproceedings{paperbot12635,
  title = {Too Much AI, Too Little Trust: What the Software Engineering Community Really Thinks},
  author = {Klara Borowa and Matteo Esposito and Valentina Lenarduzzi and Davide Taibi},
  booktitle = {ICSE},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.1145/3793657.3793877}
}