Is unrestrained technological progress ultimately powerless?
An article by Vision Team
At the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, there is a plaque commemorating its inauguration ceremony in 1880. This bronze plaque states with much precision that 10% of the city’s 11,183 residents attended the event. At that time, the city, named by Franciscan monks after the Basilica of the Angels in Assisi, was a dry outpost inhabited by settlers venturing into land previously occupied by the Mohave Indians. In just forty years, however, the county's population swelled to one million, and the iconic Hollywood sign appeared on the hills, signalling the factory of the dreams of the world had found its home.
The ultrarapid expansion of Los Angeles illustrates the challenges of a journey that has thrust the world into a future that remains difficult to fully comprehend—a future shaped by artificial intelligence, largely “designed in California”. Intelligent robots that, for more than a week, have been passively witnessing the skies above the City of Angels burning red.
The ongoing fires in Los Angeles expose, indeed, several paradoxes. The city is home to six of the ten most expensive zip-codes in the United States, yet endless private wealth appears now worthless when public infrastructure—such as the water needed for fire hydrants—falls short. California leads globally in environmental restrictions, being among the first places to ban smoking outdoors. Yet, even these measures could not prevent a cigarette butt from igniting a massive wildfire. Most troubling is the apparent inability of California’s extensive technological resources—from Silicon Valley to Santa Monica—to play any role during a real emergency.
Silicon Valley seems a very distant universe, and nobody is really blaming technology for failing to prevent fires that destroyed homes belonging to some of the very people who created and championed these advancements. Wildfires, like diseases, are still seen as events beyond the control of even the most powerful machines. This perception underscores a deeper issue with the type of progress often described as being “designed in California” (as for the I-Phone that Apple manufactures in China).
And yet, there are places where innovation is driven directly by the need to solve pressing problems. For instance, a few months ago in Shenzhen, China, DJI, the company producing 90% of the world’s drones, developed fire-fighting drones at the government’s request. These drones, built with flame-resistant materials, can operate in zero-visibility conditions that currently prevent helicopters from effectively combating the Los Angeles fires. Artificial intelligence enables these drones to map the fire and optimize extinguishing strategies. Meanwhile, even in the United States (and Brazil), large farms are increasingly adopting digital systems that use sensor for retrieving data useful to manage water flows and protect crops from unpredictable weather: similar applications can be adopted to detect fires and extinguish them before it becomes much harder.
The notion that technology serves little purpose beyond facilitating communication (like chatting) is both recent and misguided. Historically, innovation has often been driven by necessity. The ancient Romans, known for their engineering prowess, believed that “necessity is the mother of invention.” For centuries, it has been the need to survive or to ease life’s burdens that has driven humanity to develop solutions and move forward.
In recent decades, starting with the invention of internet protocols in California in 1969, many technological breakthroughs have appeared to be brilliant solutions in search of problems. This is especially true for artificial intelligence, which now struggles to demonstrate tangible value and justify the massive investments poured into it.
What is needed now is what some describe as the “entrepreneurial state” - a collective effort to invest in solutions that might not yield immediate market returns but can prevent irreversible disasters, such as those linked to climate change. Unfortunately, this kind of forward-thinking public investment is missing from both California and the broader progress it has exported to the world. Ironically, the very place that pioneered this incomplete progress now seems powerless against fires - something humanity first learned to control in ancient history.
In Los Angeles, one thing has remained unchanged over the past 150 years. At the University of Southern California museum, it is noted that when the university was founded, the city’s streets were unpaved, and no fire alarms existed. Even today, in an era where technology touches almost every aspect of life, it seems to falter at the moments when it is needed most. The challenges facing Los Angeles are shared by the world: failing to fully understand a transformation that is moving too quickly for the institutions we have and our own intellectual instruments. Without addressing this issue, even the architects of progress may find themselves at risk of being consumed by it.
References
PropertyShark. Most expensive ZIP codes in the U.S. (2024) Link.
