Hoover Institution (Stanford, CA) – The Stanford Emerging Technology Review, an bold university-wide initiative devoted to fostering a larger understanding amongst policymakers, business leaders, and the attentive public in regards to the breakthroughs and coverage implications of frontier applied sciences shaping societies and economies, launched with a public occasion on the Stanford campus.

The initiative has enlisted the college’s main scientists and engineers to provide a first-edition report, the Stanford Emerging Technology Review, meant to function a primer for ten pivotal know-how domains. This report shall be up to date usually to tell successive generations of leaders and residents.

Stanford University president Richard Saller offered introductory remarks. The Stanford group viewers listened to a dialog between two of the Review’s cochairs, Jennifer Widom (dean of the Engineering School) and Senior Fellow Amy Zegart, discussing the origins of the venture. Additionally, two members of the Review’s college from the engineering college, specialists in robotics and materials science, respectively, and the Review’s director and editor-in-chief, Herbert Lin (Hank J. Holland Fellow in Cyber Policy and Security), provided highlights of the report. At the occasion’s conclusion, Hoover Institution director Condoleezza Rice, a cochair of the Review, participated in a keynote dialog with tech entrepreneur Marc Andreessen, addressing issues about how societies are grappling with the fast tempo of technological advances and their impacts.

“A Remarkable Collaboration”

Stanford president Richard Saller remarked that, primarily based on its historical past as a catalyst for innovation in Silicon Valley, the college was uniquely certified to undertake a venture of such profound significance.

“[The Stanford Emerging Technology Review] represents a remarkable collaboration across the university,” stated Saller.

A classicist by coaching and self-discipline, Saller defined how Stanford shouldn’t be solely residence to laboratories conducting a number of the world’s most cutting-edge scientific and technological analysis but in addition a number one educational middle in social sciences, public coverage, and ethics. Moreover, Stanford boasts college and alumni who’ve served in main positions in authorities and business and have been on the forefront of fixing a number of the nation’s most vexing coverage challenges.

Saller additionally underscored how the Review represents Stanford’s multidisciplinary method to studying. Five of the Stanford’s seven faculties contributed to the publication of the report, as did 11 of its 15 impartial laboratories, facilities, and institutes.

The Origins of the Stanford Emerging Technology Review

In their dialog, Zegart and Widom defined that the Review was impressed by a go to to Stanford by US senator Mark Warner of Virginia, who inquired about analysis and developments in rising applied sciences from the college.

Describing the gathering and communication of this physique of knowledge to Warner, Zegart recalled, “It was amazing, and it was nowhere near enough. We realized that we needed to do more.”

Widom defined how Stanford’s engineering and science college have been keen to interact in a larger dialogue in regards to the broader implications of their work. She stated that the Review is exclusive for the voice it provides to technological specialists working in academia.

Academic innovation, she famous, is pushed by curiosity, not market pursuits.

“Our faculty work on problems that they think are interesting, are challenging, are important, and are not driven by a need to make a profit,” Widom stated, including, “Our faculty are bringing to the Technology Review their impartial explanation of the technology—where it is now and where it is going in the future.”

Moreover, she stated the Review provides a chance for these specialists to speak their data and concepts in methods which might be accessible to put audiences, particularly those that maintain high-stakes positions as US authorities choice makers.

Zegart described how, past the publication of the report, specialists concerned within the initiative shall be conducting briefings for policymakers in Washington, DC, and delivering pertinent details about the promise and peril of innovation to broader audiences by way of numerous multimedia and academic merchandise.

Regarding the way forward for these rising applied sciences, Widom stated that she was notably enthusiastic about how they might help enhance human well being and well-being. She added, nevertheless, that abuse of tech was her best concern.

 “I am most concerned about us, about our society and the division in our society. I think technology can do remarkable things, but the risks of technology are [that they might be] misused by a society that doesn’t believe in truth, that doesn’t listen, that isn’t united in common values,” Zegart replied. “And the values underpin everything, both domestically and [in terms of] our inspirational power in the world. It’s not a technological worry I have. It’s a human worry.”

Robots: Dirty, Dull, and Dangerous

Allison Okamura, Stanford professor of engineering and a school council member and contributor to the Review, offered her experience on robotics, which she outlined as a human-made bodily entity that goes past synthetic intelligence to sense and pose bodily results on the world round it.

Robotics are used immediately for what she known as the “Three D’s”—uninteresting, soiled, and harmful duties. These duties embody supporting manufacturing strains, catastrophe restoration efforts, and navy companies, safety, and transportation.

Okamura defined that autonomous robots work greatest in managed environments like manufacturing strains. Meanwhile, nonautonomous robots have been indispensable in medical care, for instance when operated by professionals who, aided by this know-how, can carry out surgical procedures which might be much less invasive than manually carried out procedures.

The low value of manufacturing robots comes at an opportune time, she defined, particularly as the worldwide inhabitants will get older. With workforce shortages of pros supplying elder care, robots may probably help senior residents in caring for themselves at residence.

However, she maintained that the promise of robotics additionally comes with security issues and potential results that embody the elimination, modification, and creation of sure sorts of jobs. She concluded that regardless of the promise of robotics, their use must be knowledgeable by authorized and regulatory measures that mitigate the harms that they might pose.

Materials Science: A Foundational Technology

Zhenan Bao, a Stanford professor of chemical engineering and in addition a school council member and contributor to the Review, described the foundational nature of materials science, one other one of many ten topics addressed within the report.

She defined how supplies are omnipresent. Composed of atoms, supplies will be seen to the bare eye and in different cases are smaller than the diameter of a single human hair, as in nanomaterials. Further, supplies contribute to numerous scientific and technological domains, together with the manufacturing of biocompatible gadgets utilized in medical implants, sturdy and long-lasting batteries, sustainable plastics, plane, and extra.

Bao famous that nanotechnology is an lively subfield of supplies science that has captured the curiosity of researchers up to now 20 years. Nano-assemblies have been used to stabilize mRNA vaccines in order that they are often extra simply and safely injected into the human physique. Quantum dots, or semiconductor nanocrystals, have been used to enhance biomedical engineering and enhance the efficiency of photo voltaic panels.

The future problem within the evolution of supplies science, Bao defined, is the transition from analysis to real-world purposes at scale. Although developments in synthetic intelligence shall be useful on this transition, long-term developments within the area would require substantial funding, workforce growth, and worldwide analysis collaboration between the United States and its allies and companions.

All Frontier Technologies Are Interconnected

Herbert Lin, the chief editor and director of the Review, defined that developments in a single area result in developments in others. Materials science, for instance, which research the synthesis and construction of atoms, can result in the manufacturing of extra superior semiconductors. More superior semiconductors will result in extra refined synthetic intelligence, which is able to, in flip, lead again to but extra highly effective semiconductors.

“The fields that are helped also return the favor,” Lin defined, including, “There are these interesting feedback loops between the technologies.”

Lin additionally defined that these technological domains are being quickly democratized. Access to frontier applied sciences and the aptitude to develop them is diffusing past the management of main state actors just like the United States, Russia, and China. Furthermore, in some fields, the barrier to entry may be very low and doesn’t require PhD-level schooling and expertise. These realities make regulating frontier applied sciences extra difficult, Lin stated.

A Techno-Optimist’s Manifesto

In the final session of this system, Condoleezza Rice engaged in a dialog with Silicon Valley entrepreneur and Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen, who mentioned his not too long ago printed “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto.” In the manifesto, he critiques the “Precautionary Principle”, which means that progress in know-how must be delayed or resisted if its results on society are unknown or disputed. In the piece, he lists what he refers to as lies in regards to the detrimental results of technological development together with job loss, elevated inequality, harm to well being, degradation of society, corruption of kids, and threats to our future.

As an instance of the precautionary precept, he highlighted through the dialog with Rice, the unrealized potential of nuclear energy to provide zero-emissions vitality. In the early Nineteen Seventies, President Richard Nixon known as for an bold nationwide initiative to cut back international dependence on fossil fuels, together with the development of 1 thousand nuclear energy crops by the yr 2000. However, this aim was not achieved as a result of Nixon’s plan was adopted by stringent rules – born out of fears that nuclear energy would degrade the pure surroundings – that curtailed their development.

Nevertheless, Andreessen acknowledged that whereas the applied sciences aren’t unhealthy in of themselves, people can misuse them and trigger deleterious results. However, these potential results should not halt technological progress.

Andreessen asserted that technologists in locations like Silicon Valley and policymakers in Washington ought to have interaction with each other on understanding these complicated points surrounding the usage of frontier applied sciences.

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