Swedish Schools Find Gender Gap in How Kids View AI

<p>As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes increasingly integrated into daily life, understanding how young people perceive and emotionally respond to this technology is crucial to leverage AI in novel ways to make education more meaningful and inclusive. This study explores K-12 students from South East Sweden and their sentiments toward AI by analyzing open-ended responses from 183 participants aged 9 to 16 years. Sentiment analysis of the collected data, using both VADER and TextBlob algorithms, revealed a broad spectrum of attitudes, ranging from enthusiastic optimism to explicit distrust. A linear regression analysis examined demographic predictors of sentiment scores, identifying a modest but significant effect of gender and age at first phone acquisition. Male K-12 students expressed more negative sentiments compared to female K-12 students, while students who received their first phone at an older age tended to hold slightly more positive views of AI. These findings indicate that factors such as early exposure to technology and gender influence adolescents' emotional responses to AI. This underscores the importance of addressing emotional and affective aspects in AI literacy programs and research. To deepen our understanding, future studies should broaden sentiment analysis to capture students' perspectives on ethical issues including fairness, bias, and accountability in AI systems. Such an approach will provide a more comprehensive view of how young people engage with both the opportunities and challenges presented by emerging AI technologies.</p>