Robert Downey Jr. just made a very Tony Stark announcement
If you're a Marvel and Iron Man fan, you know that Robert Downey Jr.'s character Tony Stark is a genius who's hell-bent on using technology to save the world.
Well, Downey took the stage Tuesday at Amazon’s re:MARS artificial intelligence conference to announce his real-life plan to do just that.
Tony Stark
At the Stark expo (2010) |
Robert Downey jr.
At the amazon expo(2019) |
After spending 11 years on Marvel movies, RobertDowneyJr says he’ll spend next 11 years supporting the use of robotics and tech to clean up the planet thru a new campaign called FootprintCoalition, planed to be Opening April 2020.
Robert Downey Jr. used his part of the opening keynote for Amazon’s Re:Mars conference in Las Vegas Tuesday evening to announce the launch of a new organization that is committed to using advanced technologies for the good of the environment.
The Footprint Coalition, as the group is called, is scheduled to officially launch by April of 2020.
“Between robotics and nanotechnology, we could clean up the planet significantly, if not totally, in 10 years,” Downey Jr. said, relaying that he had been given these insights a few weeks back by a roundtable of experts. “God I love experts. They’re like Wikipedia with character defects,” he joked during his talk.
The announcement was made at the end of a 20-plus minute freewheeling talk about artificial intelligence, RDJ or Tony Stark the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Downey Jr.’s own career and the evolution of his Tony Stark character, which featured cameos from Amazon’s AI assistant Alexa as well as Matt Damon, who joined via video.
Throughout his talk, Downey Jr. painted AI as a significant technological advancement that gave him hope — only to admit that he also found himself alarmed over the state of the environment. “I have this quiet sense of crisis,” he said, admitting that he had contributed more than others to the climate crisis. “I’m a one-man carbon footprint nightmare colossus.”
“Between robotics and nanotechnology, we could clean up the planet significantly, if not totally, in 10 years” Robert Downey JR This man is literally out here bringing tony stark to life, A legend
“I played Iron Man, who is really ‘White Privilege Man’”
This isn’t the first time Downey Jr. has taken AI and other advanced technologies beyond the role of his Marvel character Tony Stark. Together with his wife Susan Downey, Downey Jr. has also been producing a docu-series about AI for YouTube. The eight episodes, hour-long series, which was first announced a year ago, is meant to explore AI and the impact it will have on people’s lives.
Tuesday's announcement comes on the heels of a report from the Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration that has a dire warning about climate change.
The paper, published by the Australian think tank last week, says that the accelerating climate-change impacts, if left unchecked, could result in “large negative consequences, which will be irreversible, resulting in major reductions in global and national population, mass species extinction, economic disruption and social chaos.”
Also on Tuesday, presidential candidate Joe Biden announced a $5 trillion climate proposal as part of his campaign.
ABC News and Marvel are both part of parent company Disney.
RDJ: “i'm done playing tony stark”
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