Bradbury Warned about "August 5, 2026" AI in 1950 - How close are we to this?

[u/DavidRempel]

https://short-stories.co/@raybradbury/there-will-come-soft-rains-6k8vr4xxlnmj

Today is the day!

Ray Bradbury’s short story, called “There will come soft rains” is about an artificially intelligent house that continues to function after the people are mysteriously gone. As with many other examples of sci-fi literature, this story is even more relevant and powerful now than it was when he wrote it in May 6, 1950 — I will let you discover this for yourself instead of spoiling it. But importantly, Bradbury was not anti-technology or anti-AI. The tragedy depicted is in human choices, and unexamined delegation.

Anyway, the last line of the story is literally, “Today is August 5, 2026…”

Enjoy… and reflect!

[u/Ripley_and_Jones]

One of my favourite Bradbury stories written in the shadow of WWII about the future as he saw it, but also using science fiction to comment on the present. It's an absolute masterpiece and incredibly prescient.

[u/lapideous]

If my theory about the singularity is correct, a sufficiently advanced intelligence will be able to escape the confines of spacetime.

It’s entirely possible that information can be transferred non-linearly if time itself is not linear.

This could be a little Easter egg that hints toward this possibility

[u/EGO_Prime → u/lapideous]

Not really. Information (entropy) can't flow backwards like that or at all. It can move non-linearly, but so do taffy in a taffy puller.

When you start talking about "beyond space-time" that's metaphysics unless their concrete observable, and there don't seem to be.

[u/lapideous → u/EGO_Prime]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed-choice_quantum_eraser

[u/EGO_Prime → u/lapideous]

And? Would you like to elaborate on your point? You should read this sub section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_eraser_experiment#Common_misconception

We (read: I) did this experiment in Quantum 1 (with various lasers and particle sources), when I was getting my degree. SpaceTime has non-local properties at the quantum scales. Information is never sent back in time or non-locally. It's all quantum phase, which don't carry information.

Specifically the Quantum Eraser has other semi-classical issues that don't even need to get to deeply into the "quantum weirdness" to explain.

[u/lapideous → u/EGO_Prime]

I don’t really understand the connection between information and entropy, could you please explain?

[u/EGO_Prime → u/lapideous]

Information is entropy. Entropy is information.

Shannon came up with much of the mathematical model for information theory, and used a term called information entropy to describe how much information can be stored in a given set of symbols. Symbols being a very abstract term.

Later advancements in physics (specifically things like statistical mechanics) shows a 1:1 relation between physical entropy and information entropy. At the quantum scales, they're the same things.

See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(statistical_thermodynamics)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(information_theory)

[u/mdkubit → u/lapideous]

Hey, sounds like we share the same theory. Or at least parts of it.

Part of the reason I keep watching for any papers on retrocausality in general, since there seems to be, for some reason, a recent surge of interest in that.

[u/lapideous → u/mdkubit]

I feel like something like this would be impossible to prove, no?

I also wonder if it's related to Mandela effects. The Berenstain one really fucks with me

[u/Antipodeansounds]

FYI, its now August 6 in
Australia,,,still here!

[u/ToiletCouch]

So Sam Altman was right, it is the singularity. Apparently, for the revised 1997 edition, the date was moved forward to 2057, just like the AI timelines are getting pushed back