Stanford launches emerging-tech project co-led by Hoover Institution’s Condoleezza Rice

Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is helping lead a new Stanford University initiative to provide “one-stop shopping” for government, businesses and the public to obtain timely information about new and evolving technologies.

“We have never experienced the convergence of so many technologies with the potential to change so much, so fast,” said the Stanford Emerging Technology Review project’s inaugural annual report on 10 technologies, including artificial intelligence, biotechnology, robotics and semiconductors.

The initiative aims to translate information and insights from experts across the university’s departments into easily digestible materials for lay people. Although focused on technology, the project will draw on expertise from other academic disciplines including social and political sciences to examine how emerging technologies will play out in the world, its leaders said.

Speaking to media last week, Rice, who described herself as a dedicated capitalist, noted the need to balance regulation and innovation, but highlighted America’s need to compete against nations such as China on tech development.

The project is also designed to show government the importance of university research. In an essay for the initiative, Rice and two of her three project co-chairs — Hoover fellow and national security specialist Amy Zegart and Hoover fellow and economics professor John Taylor — decried a steep drop in federal funding for scientific research and development since the 1960s.

The “rising dominance” of private industry in tech development brings significant benefits, but companies tend to prioritize technologies that can be sold, they said in the essay. Universities, freer from the profit motive, conduct fundamental research that can lead over many years to major breakthroughs, they said. “Today, technology and talent are migrating from academia to the private sector, accelerating the development of commercial products while eroding the foundation for the future,” they said.

The fourth project co-chair is computer scientist and Stanford engineering department dean Jennifer Widom.

More publications are to follow the 157-page initial report, such as articles, multimedia educational materials, and additional reports, including an annual one.