Over the past two centuries, the rapid acceleration of technological innovation has enabled a "great acceleration" (Steffen et al., 2015) marked by exponential rates of change to both human and natural systems at a global scale. This has raised concerns over the sustainability of planetary systems (Rosckstrom et al., 1999), leading some to suggest that we are in a global progress trap (Wright, 2004) marked by human ecological overshoot (Rees, 2023) that will culminate in a technological singularity (Vinge, 1993; Shanahan 2015). Technology can be understood to lie at the very confluence of earth's human and natural (ie. socio-natural) systems, with its deployment frequently entangling and reshaping both in unexpected ways. Meanwhile technological governance has remained largely reactionary, and research on the implications of emerging technologies for both society and environments has failed to keep up with the rates of technological innovation, which combined have hindered our ability to prevent or mitigate potential impacts and avert systems level crises. This presentation centers on the emerging technology of AI (and related information communication technologies) and its role within a possible global "progress trap". In so doing, it will elucidate how a political ecology approach can help to unpack the complex role of technology in socio-natural systems and help to predict key emergent challenges. Ultimately, a call is made for the urgent need to implement techno-progressive governance approaches to emerging technologies.