Tweeting AI: Perceptions of Lay vs Expert Twitterati

Abstract: With the recent advancements in AI, various organizations and individuals are debating about the progress of AI as a blessing or a curse for the future of the society. This paper conducts an investigation on how the public perceives the progress of AI by utilizing the data shared on Twitter. Specifically, this paper performs a comparative analysis on the understanding of users belonging to two categories -- general AI-Tweeters (AIT) and expert AI-Tweeters (EAIT) who share posts about AI on Twitter. Our analysis revealed that users from both the categories express distinct emotions and interests towards AI. Users from both the categories regard AI as positive and are optimistic about the progress of AI but the experts are more negative than the general AI-Tweeters. Expert AI-Tweeters share relatively large percentage of tweets about their personal news compared to technical aspects of AI. However, the effects of automation on the future are of primary concern to AIT than to EAIT. When the expert category is sub-categorized, the emotion analysis revealed that students and industry professionals have more insights in their tweets about AI than academicians.