I found that idea interesting. Will we consider it the norm in the future to have a “firewall” layer between news and ourselves?
I once wrote a short story where the protagonist was receiving news of the death of a friend but it was intercepted by its AI assistant that said “when you will have time, there is an emotional news that does not require urgent action that you will need to digest”. I feel it could become the norm.
EDIT: For context, Karpathy is a very famous deep learning researcher who just came back from a 2-weeks break from internet. I think he does not talks about politics there but it applies quite a bit.
EDIT2: I find it interesting that many reactions here are (IMO) missing the point. This is not about shielding one from information that one may be uncomfortable with but with tweets especially designed to elicit reactions, which is kind of becoming a plague on twitter due to their new incentives. It is to make the difference between presenting news in a neutral way and as “incredibly atrocious crime done to CHILDREN and you are a monster for not caring!”. The second one does feel a lot like exploit of emotional backdoors in my opinion.
But the post is explicitly about Tweets that challenge emotions and views and how that’s harmful. It’s one thing to want to see fewer suspicious offers from Nigerian princes and horny MILFS in my area. It’s another to tell an AI that you don’t want to see events or conversations that might be upsetting or make you think about ethics, politics, etc.
P.S. I’m replying to you a lot today, just want to say I’m not trying to be abusive or follow you around. You keep making points on this page that I want to engage with, and hopefully it’s not coming across as persecution.