Social ambition meets global fears

As the current Iranian calendar year (which began on March 20, 2024) draws to a close, one has to admit that it has been a period marked by remarkable advancements, pressing challenges, and profound social shifts. From groundbreaking technological innovations that continue to reshape industries to the escalating urgency of climate crises and the renewed vigor of humanity’s quest beyond Earth, this year has been a tapestry of progress and peril. While achievements in artificial intelligence have dazzled the world, offering both promise and concern, the planet’s environmental struggles have reminded us of the fragility of our shared home. Meanwhile, the space race has reached new heights, fueled by both public and private ambitions. Together, these events have defined a year of hope, fear, and relentless transformation.

By Amir Mollaee Mozaffari
Staff writer

AI achievements continue to amaze world

For the second year in a row, the year starting March 20, 2024, was undoubtedly the year of AI, at least in social, technological, and academic areas. While we stepped into this year enjoying the services of generative AIs as a chatbot-driven novelty, it has branched off into various practical tools, from music and video generation to significantly smarter robots. So, instead of dying down, the AI frenzy continued to build up, completely transforming the landscapes of some professions.

To be sure, chatbots and generative AI models did not lose attraction. If anything, more companies and even states threw their hat in the ring, each promising to offer something extra or different. This year, we saw the launch of, to name a few, OpenAI’s GPT-4o and Sora, Google’s Gemini 1.5 and 2.0 Models and NotebookLM, Meta’s Llama series, Microsoft’s Copilot+, China’s free DeepSeek AI assistant, and the latest of them all, xAI’s Grok, which has a “sense of humor” and direct access to X. Also considering the release of Google’s quantum computer, Willow, which is capable of solving complex problems exponentially faster than traditional computers, it’s safe to say that next year, we will also be marveling at achievements of AI. However, there are still prominent achievements of AI to talk about, interestingly, in other new areas.
The Nobel Prizes for Physics and Chemistry recently honored groundbreaking AI-related research. The Physics Prize was awarded to John J. Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton for their work on artificial neural networks, which revolutionized machine learning. The Chemistry Prize went to the Head of Google AI Sir Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper for developing AlphaFold 2, an AI model that predicts protein structures from amino acid sequences, solving a 50-year scientific challenge. This breakthrough has vast potential for advancing medicine, vaccines, and material sciences, encouraging others to use AI to address unsolvable problems in their own fields.
When all of these developments were unfolding with dizzying speed, fears and pessimisms were also being voiced by legislators, ordinary people, and AI visionaries alike. Mainly focused on the dangers of unethical use of AI, these fears were eventually partly addressed by the EU — which is spearheading legislation on such modern problems. In August 2024, the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act took effect, introducing the world’s first comprehensive AI regulation. It categorizes AI systems by risk, banning “unacceptable” uses like public facial recognition and social scoring, while regulating high-risk applications. The law focuses on controlling AI providers and professional users rather than granting individual rights. It applies broadly across sectors but excludes military, national security, research, and non-professional uses. Adopted by the EU Parliament in March 2024, the Act aims to ensure safe and ethical AI development, setting a global precedent for AI governance and safeguarding against harmful misuse. So, we are slowly covering all bases, or are we? With the speed at which AI is developing, it’s quite likely that we will miss a spot, so the fears will never really subside. In the meantime, humanity seems to be doing better overall because of such efforts and models, and we thank our great, well-meaning minds that brought us here.

Rocket rivalry reaches new heights

Although, as you will see, we are evidently not doing much to save our own planet — allow me to poke fun a bit here — we are at least still exploring space and scanning for alternative global residences, and we are working toward it hard. This year was a great year for the so-called space race. Interestingly enough, this time private companies are taking center stage, to various degrees.
The Boeing Starliner (or CST-100), developed by Boeing under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, turned heads when it was launched into space in June 2024. However, the jubilance shortly turned into worries as it was revealed that the spacecraft’s thrusters malfunctioned on approach to the International Space Station (ISS), making it too risky to return its astronauts to Earth. This extended their eight-day stay on the ISS to nine months as they waited for a SpaceX Crew Dragon to return them home in March.
Speaking of SpaceX, the private company tested its two-stage fully reusable super heavy-lift launch vehicle five times this Iranian calendar, each edging the company’s CEO Elon Musk closer to his lifelong dream of sending humans and cargo to the moon and, subsequently, Mars. The eighth and latest test was both a success and a failure, as the launch tower successfully caught Booster 15, but during its initial burn, four of the six engines of Ship 34 experienced premature shutdowns, exploding the ship.
In relative silence, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) launched its sixth robotic lunar exploration mission, named Chang’e 6, on May 3. It was the first lunar mission to retrieve samples from the far side of the Moon. The mission concluded on June 25 after approximately 53 days, when the return capsule, carrying the collected samples, descended through the atmosphere and safely touched down in Inner Mongolia using a parachute. Some pundits believe that “the slow but sensible Chinese tortoise is likely to beat the complacent US hare”. Not only time but also space will tell.

Endless damage control with climate change

The photo shows a hellish spectacle where the Palisades Fire ravages a neighborhood amid high winds in the

Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, US, on January 7, 2025

During the past year, the news about the climate of our beloved planet was primarily not as upbeat, not even some of the time. To be fair, the trend started a while ago, but people all around the globe really felt the shockingly heightened magnitude of some of the environmental events in their bones this year.
Who can forget that when the Iranian calendar year started on March 20, 2024, the people of the world, one by one, were already starting to hear more and more about the outbreak of another virus, Dengue Fever. Iranians slowly got the memo around July, but by April 30, more than 7.6 million dengue cases had been reported to the WHO, with 3.4 million confirmed cases, over 16,000 severe cases, and more than 3,000 deaths. While the virus is a mosquito-borne disease, with the increase in temperatures and rainfall — which was characteristic of yet another year in a row — the mosquitoes that carried dengue viruses extended their range, just like Malaria-carrying mosquitos did this year. According to a recent study by researchers at Harvard and Stanford Universities, nearly one-fifth of dengue cases in Latin America and the Caribbean — approximately 45 million infections annually over the past decade — are linked to climate change.
Now, there were other cases of extreme events caused by the increased temperature that at first glance, may have not been attributable to it, but we also simply saw record-setting heat waves all around the world. The situation quickly got out of hand in some countries. The South Asian nation of Bangladesh, for example, faced an unprecedented 24-day heatwave in April 2024, with temperatures hitting 42°C (108°F), 16°C above average. Shattering a 76-year record, it caused nationwide school closures, disrupted education for 33 million children, and severely impacted farmers.
Deadly and devastating tropical cyclones hitting the shores of the United States and neighboring countries are unfortunately not met with the same surprise as before. Still, Hurricane Helene made news in September as it was the deadliest and strongest by many standards, causing at least 221 deaths and $78.7 billion in damage.
We ended the year with yet another devastating environmental and social disaster. Almost for the whole month of January 2025, the Los Angeles metropolitan area and San Diego County went through a series of wildfires. By January 31, the wildfires killed at least 29 people, forced more than 200,000 to evacuate, and destroyed more than 18,000 homes and structures. In total, the wildfires burned over 57,000 acres (23,000 hectares) of land. Contributing to the intensity of the fires were drought conditions, low humidity, a buildup of vegetation from the previous winter, and hurricane-force Santa Ana winds.
More than a series of unfortunate events, what we briefly read shows that due to the worsening of global warming, we will be dealing with more extreme weather and disease events, sometimes sidelining us from where we do not expect. And when it’s done, it’s done; You can manage the crises as much as you can, but the damage will be done. Can we live with that?