The star of the Marvel universe has announced support for innovative technology as part of the fight to improve the state of the environment
From: Zveta, Science and Environment News Agency
Robert Downey Jr. has one of the most fascinating and tumultuous careers in Hollywood: from an Oscar nomination for portraying Charlie Chaplin, he bounced between prisons, rehab centers and TV series, only to reinvent himself as Iron Man and the world's highest-grossing movie actor . Now, it seems he has found himself a new challenge.
At an Amazon company conference in early June in Las Vegas, the actor announced the establishment of the "Footprint Coalition" that will use breakthrough technologies to clean up the environment. The project's website currently only allows registration for an online newsletter (newsletter) and in his presentation at the conference, Downey described the move in general terms only, but it seems to be an intriguing and inspiring idea.
Clean up the world in ten years
The conference was dedicated to the topics of machine learning, robotics and artificial intelligence and their applications. Along with other speakers who required these technologies to build smart homes, improve driverless cars or develop the next version of Alexa, the actor surprised by his announcement of their utilization for the benefit of humanity's great challenge today.
Although Iron Man hung up the suit at the end of the last film of the Avengers series, Tony Stark - a genius inventor who turns from an arrogant weapons manufacturer into the protector of humanity through advanced technologies - is a source of inspiration for the actor who played him for 11 years. Downey told of a meeting with a group of experts at the end of which he decided to invest his personal capital "in a combination of robotics and nanotechnology that will make it possible to significantly, if not completely, clean the planet within a decade."
The project will start operating in less than a year, and the ten years until 2030 will be devoted to the realization of the idea - which could possibly turn into a glorious failure due to technological, bureaucratic and other difficulties - but Downey hopes that he will be able to retire with a significant achievement for future generations. By the way, artificial intelligence is not a foreign field for Downey, who produces a documentary series on the subject for YouTube with his wife.
The project will start operating in less than a year, and the ten years until 2030 will be dedicated to realizing the idea
Will technology really save the world?
The reliance on technology as the lifeline of the environmental crisis is a controversial issue. Many believe that technological progress is the key to fixing the environment, starting with finding solutions to reduce carbon in the atmosphere and ending with cleaning the plastic in the oceans. But others argue that technology itself - starting with the industrial revolution and ending with the current digital age - has a significant part in creating the environmental crisis and therefore relying on it alone as a solution is an internal contradiction. According to this approach, without an urgent change in the behavior of people, businesses and companies, international organizations and governments, the solution will not be found.
In addition, technology needs time to materialize: if it takes Robert Downey Jr. a decade to implement his project, there are contracts that this is roughly the amount of time we have left to change the course of the collision with the results of the climate crisis. Even if this is a pessimistic forecast, without a change in behavior the crisis will only worsen and it may not be enough for those technologies that seem to have potential impact today.
In fact, technology companies like Amazon itself are becoming a critical component in exacerbating the problem. Recently, thousands of Amazon employees, including senior executives, signed an open appeal to the founding CEO and the company's board of directors demanding the adoption of an internal plan to deal with climate change and criticizing the company's current moves as insufficient. The CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, is currently the richest man in the world and next to him are at the top of the list of the world's richest people, mainly the heads of the giant information technology companies. These have the option to make both moves: to change the environmental behavior of their companies and to invest in technological solutions, including solutions that look like customers from one of Downey Jr.'s movies.
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