TASK DEFINITION: Given a document and an entity the task is to select the author's sentiment towards the entity. Sentiments can be Positive, Neutral and Negative. Select Positive if the article expresses a positive view towards the given entity or praises its quality or skills. Select Neutral if the document expresses no clear view towards the entity or has equal amounts of positive and negative statements or expressing some fact/quote by someone else. Select Negative if the article expresses a negative view towards like harsh remarks, criticizing entities action/decision etc. Note that URLs in the text have been replaced with [Link].
PROBLEM: What is the sentiment of the following document towards the entity Rachel Botsman ? In her witty new book Australian technology author and TED celebrity Rachel Botsman tells us why it did not work. Who Can You Trust? How Technology Brought Us Together and Why It Could Drive Us Apart might be a bit too perky for some but it reveals some deep truths.
With industrial power collapsed  social media’s “distributed trust” began its run to win popular trust.  Botsman  even claims to have predicted the next stage of evolution  anticipating Airbnb  Zipcar and Uber in  her  previous book. At first the masses took to social technology like ducks to water but few thought through the costs of power flowing from institutional experts to less sophisticated individuals. It turned out that these social media had institutions too  if less hierarchical  but still leading to someone at the top with a great degree of control over the people’s “open” media below them.
 Botsman  says  she  would not have written  her  book if  she  did not think distributed networks could solve many problems and develop popular trust  but the many examples presented in  her  book demonstrate that “distributed trust always seem to lead us back to centralized power ” with Facebook  Amazon  and Alibaba leading the list.
 Her  thesis is that distributed systems need to know who is telling the truth in order to be social but their media technology develop so fast and anonymously it becomes difficult to trace accountability. Perhaps 75 percent of automobiles will self-drive by 2040. How can sufficient trust develop in such a major activity in such a short time? Blockchains like Bitcoin may replace governmental currency and financial transactions. Robots threaten to take everyone’s job. The most famous bot was HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey and we all know what happened then. Some “trust pause” will certainly be necessary for such major social transitions.
Take the number one social media technology guy  Mark Zuckerberg  who created Facebook to be an open forum for public discussion. Yet  after social media was accused of biasing the presidential election even  he  had to reluctantly concede (the second time) that there was an abundance of fake news on  his  site  which  he  then promised to fix in a socially positive way.  His  solution was to balance alternative views by adding “additional perspectives ” including noting after doubtful material that fact checkers disputed the claims in the original published news. But who would do the “fact checking”?
 Botsman  does not mention  it  but Google’s top scientist Ray Kurzweil had bigger ideas. Computers would be thinking for themselves by 2014 with humans becoming immortal soon after. Humans would become immortal under Kurzweil’s Calico project to replicate nature’s control of mitochondrial DNA by moving toxic bacteria into the cell nucleus to stop aging. With age under control people would live forever. At the same time  artificial intelligence would develop computers that learn by themselves. Ageless individuals could then link an AI machine to their brain so they could give accurate and immediate responses to every kind of question. But if this takes place instantly  is that a person still a person or a computer?
China’s Social Credit System would produce a “social credit score” for every Chinese citizen and introduce national networks of shame to ameliorate and control unruly segments of the population. This system should have a bullish future in much of the world now under authoritarian governments.  Botsman  quips: “Today China  tomorrow a place near you.”
Not a place in the U.S. with its democratic government protecting privacy  right? One big obstacle to such protection mentioned by  Botsman  is that government regulation simply cannot keep up with the explosive rate of change in private social media technology. There is that free speech and press stuff but Congress just approved another renewal of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act seventeen years after 9/11 and few doubt that some similar future horrendous terrorist act would make the government’s surveillance even more intrusive.
 Botsman ’s general solution to increase social trust is to rely upon reputation  which is sound  but extremely difficult to evaluate as  her  book proves.
How do we even know if  Botsman  isn’t a bot already  predicting China for us all?

SOLUTION: Positive

PROBLEM: What is the sentiment of the following document towards the entity Guzman ? A US judge on Wednesday postponed until September the trial in New York of notorious Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.
On Monday  Cogan had delayed the latest pre-trial hearing from January 19 to February 15  after  Guzman 's lawyer demanded more time to review several hundred thousand pages of documents in the case.
 Guzman  has been held in solitary confinement in New York since being extradited to the United States a year ago.
Accused of running the Sinaloa cartel   he  is facing 17 charges  and if convicted   he  is likely to spend the rest of  his  life in a maximum security US prison.

SOLUTION: Neutral

PROBLEM: What is the sentiment of the following document towards the entity Emmerson Mnangagwa ? (CNN) The elevation of Emmerson Mnangagwa to the presidency of Zimbabwe would amount to an act of political survival matched only by the man he'd replace  Robert Mugabe.
Until Mugabe fired him as Vice President last week   Mnangagwa 's entire political career had been hitched to Zimbabwe's 93-year-old leader.
Now  with the military in control in Harare and Mugabe confined to his residency   Mnangagwa  is believed to be at the center of moves to install  himself  at the head of a transitional government.
This wouldn't be the first time  Mnangagwa  has been in line to lead Zimbabwe
They also hint at  Mnangagwa 's dark past. In late 2000  a cable written by Earl Irving   then a US diplomat in Harare  described  Mnangagwa  as "widely feared and despised throughout the country " warning  he  could be "an even more repressive leader" than Mugabe if  he  were to succeed  him .
Fear of  Mnangagwa  stems from  his  position as Mugabe's enforcer and head of the Central Intelligence Organization (CIO)  or secret police  and  his  alleged role in the 1983-84 massacres of the Ndebele ethnic group in Matabeleland  a region in Zimbabwe's southwest that was a center of political opposition to Mugabe's regime.
Mnangagwa's elevation without an election would be viewed with suspicion abroad. Kate Hoey  a British Labour MP who has campaigned for years to highlight oppression under the Mugabe regime  described  Mnangagwa 's in a parliamentary debate as "probably the one person in Zimbabwe who inspires even greater terror than Mugabe."
Nicknamed the "crocodile" on account of his political longevity and survival skills   Mnangagwa  has for years been thought to be biding  his  time  ready to takeover from Mugabe when the nonagenarian finally stepped aside  or died.
 His  impeccable revolutionary credentials  coupled with  his  strong support among key parts of Zimbabwe's elite -- specifically within the military and security services -- singled  him  out as an obvious  and non-controversial  successor.
But this was to dramatically change earlier last week  when Mugabe sacked  Mnangagwa  in a move seen as shoring up the power of  his  wife and chosen successor  Grace Mugabe.
A statement from the country's information ministry accused  Mnangagwa  of "disloyalty  disrespect  deceitfulness and unreliability " sending  him  into hiding amid reports  he  was attempting to build a coalition to take on Grace Mugabe in the next election.
"One after the other  (Mugabe's) vice presidents and people around  him  were estranged by Grace Mugabe " said Geoff Hill  author of "What happens after Mugabe?".

SOLUTION:
Negative