  The application of AI-powered tools has piqued the interest of many fields,
particularly in the academic community. This study uses ChatGPT, currently the
most powerful and popular AI tool, as a representative example to analyze how
the Chinese public perceives the potential of large language models (LLMs) for
educational and general purposes. Although facing accessibility challenges, we
found that the number of discussions on ChatGPT per month is 16 times that of
Ernie Bot developed by Baidu, the most popular alternative product to ChatGPT
in the mainland, making ChatGPT a more suitable subject for our analysis. The
study also serves as the first effort to investigate the changes in public
opinion as AI technologies become more advanced and intelligent. The analysis
reveals that, upon first encounters with advanced AI that was not yet highly
capable, some social media users believed that AI advancements would benefit
education and society, while others feared that advanced AI, like ChatGPT,
would make humans feel inferior and lead to problems such as cheating and a
decline in moral principles. The majority of users remained neutral.
Interestingly, with the rapid development and improvement of AI capabilities,
public attitudes have tended to shift in a positive direction. We present a
thorough analysis of the trending shift and a roadmap to ensure the ethical
application of ChatGPT-like models in education and beyond.
