Using Sentiment Analysis for Comparing Attitudes between Computer Professionals and Laypersons on the Topic of Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

Most research in investigating computer professionals and laypersons' attitudes toward artificial intelligence (AI) are limited to online or offline surveys. This paper analyzes computer professionals' and laypersons' attitudes toward AI by using a sentiment lexicon developed by Wilson et al. To explore whether there is a correlation between the occupation categories (computer-related versus non-computer-related occupations) and people's attitudes toward artificial intelligence, I conducted a polarity classification of over 0.6 million tweets containing references to "AI", "artificial intelligence", or both. The result did not provide evidence of a relationship between public attitudes toward AI and the occupation categories. In the end, several future directions in the data collection and the data analysis are discussed.