STANFORD UNIVERSITY
STANFORD EMERGING TECHNOLOGY REVIEW
Reporting on Key Technology Areas and their Policy Implications
Emerging technologies are transforming societies, economies, and geopolitics. This moment brings unparalleled promise and novel risks. In every era, technological advances buoy nations that develop and scale them—helping to save lives, win wars, foster greater prosperity, and advance the human condition. At the same time, history is filled with examples where slow-moving governments stifled innovation in ways policymakers never intended, and nefarious actors used technological advances in ways that inventors never imagined. Technology is a tool. It is not inherently good or bad. But its use can amplify human talent or degrade it, uplift societies or repress them, solve vexing challenges or exacerbate them. These effects are sometimes deliberate but often accidental.
The stakes of technological developments today are especially high. Artificial intelligence (AI) is already revolutionizing industries, from music to medicine to the military, and its impact has been likened to the invention of electricity. Yet AI is just one among many technologies that are ushering in profound change. Fields like synthetic biology, materials science, and neuroscience hold potential to vastly improve health care, environmental sustainability, economic growth, and more. We have experienced moments of major technological change before. But we have never experienced the convergence of so many technologies with the potential to change so much, so fast.
The Stanford Emerging Technology Review (SETR) is the first product of a major new Stanford technology education initiative for policymakers. Our goal is to help both the public and private sectors better understand the technologies poised to transform our world so that the United States can seize opportunities, mitigate risks, and ensure that the American innovation ecosystem continues to thrive.
Our efforts are guided by four observations:
Policymakers need better resources to help them understand technological developments faster, continuously, and more easily.
America’s global innovation leadership matters.
Academia’s role in American innovation is essential yet increasingly at risk.
The view from Stanford is unique, important and needed now more than ever.
Ensuring American leadership in science and technology requires all of us—academia, industry, government—to keep listening, learning, and working together. We hope the Stanford Emerging Technology Review starts meaningful and lasting conversations about how an innovation ecosystem benefits us all. The promise of emerging technology is boundless if we have the foresight to understand it and the fortitude to embrace the challenges.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the ability of computers to perform functions associated with the human brain, including perceiving, reasoning, learning, interacting, problem solving, and exercising creativity.
Learn MoreBiotechnology creates products or services in partnership with biology. Synthetic biology is third-generation biotechnology, complementing domestication and breeding (the first generation) and gene editing (the second generation).
Learn MoreCryptography is the practice of protecting data from being altered or accessed inappropriately. It is essential for most internet activity, including messaging, e-commerce, and banking. There are two main types of cryptography: symmetric and asymmetric.
Learn MoreMaterials science is a foundational technology that underlies advances in many fields, including robotics, space, energy, and synthetic biology.
Learn MoreA brain-machine interface is a device that maps neural impulses from the brain to a computer and vice versa. There are many potential applications for this technology: sensory replacement or augmentation, replacement of severed limbs, direct mind-to-computer interfacing, or even computer assisted memory recall and cognition.
Learn MoreEnergy can be produced from two types of nuclear reactions: fission and fusion.
Learn MoreRobotics has and will transform many industries through elimination, modification, or creation of jobs and functions. Robots are human-made physical entities with ways of sensing themselves or the world around them and the ability to create physical effects on that world.
Learn MoreChips must be designed and then manufactured, calling for two different skill sets. Recent research has identified methods that allow innovations in materials, devices, fabrication, and hardware to be added to existing process or systems at low incremental costs. These methods need to be further developed since they will be essential to continue to improve the computing infrastructure we all depend on.
Learn MoreSpace technology is any technology developed for the purpose of conducting or supporting activities beyond the Kármán line (i.e., one hundred kilometers or sixty-two miles above the Earth’s surface).
Learn MoreThe transition to sustainable energy relies on improving every step of the energy supply chain, from generation to transmission to storage. However, the sheer scale of global energy needs makes it clear that no single technology can meet these demands.
Learn MoreStanford University is tightly coupled to the scientific and technological innovation ecosystem and has been for many years. The Stanford Emerging Technology Review (SETR) is an effort to produce a periodic report for policy and leadership audiences that accounts for new and important scientific and technical developments at Stanford University across ten technological areas and identifies barriers, needs, and opportunities for progress in each area.
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The Hoover Institution and Stanford School of Engineering have launched the inaugural edition of the Stanford Emerging Technology Review, a project and publication dedicated to the forefront of technologies shaping the global landscape.