Intelligent education: does it signal the future of education? Insights from Chinese social media platforms

Generative artificial intelligence (GAI) is leading AI models towards practical applications and real world scenarios, significantly impacting the field of education. This study aims to explore public responses regarding the application of GAI in education and deeply examine the underlying sentiments associated with these perceptions. First, this research mines data from over 40,000 comments on Chinese social media platforms, including Bilibili, Weibo, and Douyin. Next, we employ text analysis methods such as LDA (Latent Dirichlet Allocation) and the SnowNLP model for online public opinion topic mining and sentiment analysis, respectively. The analysis reveals four main themes: human career development, the development of school education, the intelligent future, and the impact on higher education. Unlike the previous studies, this research finds that public attitudes towards the intelligent future in education are more positive than negative. Additionally, the negative attitudes mainly focus on career development and school education, highlighting issues and challenges at both the societal and school levels. These findings hold both theoretical and practical significance for the field of intelligent education. This study reveals the key issues and emotional tendencies of public concern and provides a valuable perspective for understanding the integration of GAI and education. Furthermore, this study provides significant references for education policymakers, technology developers, and educators. By analyzing public needs and concerns, policymakers can better optimize educational technology initiatives and promote the appropriate application of GAI. This article emphasizes the importance of harmonious interaction between the public and artificial intelligence and fosters the advancement of intelligent education towards greater efficiency, intelligence and humanization.