Actor Robert Downey Jr turns real-life superhero as he announces the launch of a new organisation 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. God, I love experts. They're like Wikipedia with character defects,” said the Iron Man, speaking at the opening of Amazon’s re:MARS conference in Las Vegas on Tuesday evening. “I said, ‘let’s commit to a process, let’s fund a coalition, I’m all in’. And that did not get the inspiring reaction I expected. It was dead silence, it was a lead balloon,” he added.
While the actor-director didn’t share many details on how the organisation was going to achieve its goal, he said that even making a small dent could be the most important thing he had ever done.
The announcement came at the end of a freewheeling talk about artificial intelligence, 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.