DiscoG X Workshop 4: How Does AI Understand Sentiment?

Workshop 4 of DiscoG X, 6 June 2026. Ten workshops marking ten years of DiscoG Coding Academy.

When students arrived for Workshop 4, several of them immediately asked the same question: is there a guest speaker today?

It was one of the loveliest things to happen across the whole series so far. The fact that students aged 9–13 had come to look forward to hearing from university graduates and young professionals, that they were genuinely curious about what people working in these fields actually do, says everything about what this programme is building.

Gerard, however, was not going to let the moment pass without a response. In true "Gerard" fashion, he put on a hat and declared himself today's guest speaker, donning his self-assigned "DiscoG stage name", "Bob".

Gerard presenting the AI capability types slide to students at DiscoG Coding Academy, Workshop 4, 6 June 2026 Caption: Workshop 4 in full swing at DiscoG Coding Academy, 6 June 2026.

How Does AI Understand Sentiment was Workshop 4 / 10. You can see the full series here.

Introducing NLP, and Sentiment Analysis

The session opened with a look at AI itself, what it is, where it came from, and the three broad types: Narrow AI, which covers everything that exists today, General AI, which does not exist yet, and Superintelligent AI, which remains hypothetical.

From there we zoomed in on Natural Language Processing, the branch of AI behind the voice assistants, translation tools and chatbots, and specifically on sentiment analysis: the process of reading a piece of text and working out the emotion behind it. This was the ultimate goal of today, to be able to start to answer the question of how does AI understand sentiment.

From the Workshop 4 presentation. Sentiment analysis is one of six examples of applications of Natural Language Processing shown to students.

Students started with a hands-on activity, assigning emotional scores against full sentences, before being introduced to the twist: the word "not". One small word, in the right position, can shift the emotional meaning of an entire sentence. Students worked out the rules for how that should work, then built those rules into their own programs.

A few moment we will not forget

One student in Year 8 had attended our 2024 "Introduction to AI" Summer Bootcamp, which included a section on this exact topic. He arrived with a real foundation, and an evolved insight into the topic. What interested him now was understanding how AI understands sarcasm in a sentence that looks completely genuine? It is a problem researchers are still working on, and he had arrived at it himself.

Another student tried to trip up the NOT logic using a double negative. It flipped the sentiment back to the word's original meaning. He had found a real edge case, understood exactly why it happened, and explained it to the group without being asked.

From the Workshop 4 presentation. Students worked out how the word "not" should change the meaning of a scored word, then wrote those rules into their code.

But the moment that will stay with us the longest came right at the end. One of our youngest students in the group, in Year 5, walked his mum through the whole workshop and project. He explained the three types of AI, and clearly explained what sentiment analysis means, describing what the program they had built actually does and how it works. He answered her questions calmly and carefully, with a quiet confidence and understanding.

This was our proudest moment of the series so far. A huge confidence boost, and a real reminder of why it is so important that we continue to pour so much into DiscoG. Not just to teach our students a skill, but to show them where that skill leads. To help them see that learning to code is not about learning to use a tool. It is about learning to break down a problem and solve it.

Thanks to these amazing student for the reminder!

Join us this summer

DiscoG X is a short series of workshops for Years 5 to 9, but DiscoG Coding Academy runs weekly term-time classes during the academic year as well as Summer Holiday Bootcamps for students in Years 1 to 13.

Whatever stage your child is at, there is a place for them here.

Summer Bootcamps are intensive and hands-on, with Specialised Courses built around the same approach you've seen in this post. Spaces fill up quickly.

Book a summer bootcamp place.

Not able to make summer? Register your interest for September term-time classes to be one of the first to hear when spaces open.

Any questions? Get in touch!