Drones carrying fireworks: why the world's most famous gunpowder artist is collaborating with AI

For decades, Cai Guo-Qiang has been the world's foremost fine artist of explosions. He is famous for his massive fireworks displays, from his glowing footsteps in the sky at the opening of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, to his 2015 Sky Ladder, a 1,650-foot flaming ladder to heaven featured in a Netflix documentary. Recently, the gunpowder artist has become obsessed with a new threatening technology: artificial intelligence. AI "brings me more anxiety, but also, freshness", the 66-year-old Chinese artist told me last week at the historic Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles, where he was preparing for his newest "explosion event", which would be the kickoff of a major arts festival opening in southern California this month. "It's similar to why I use gunpowder," Cai told me.