CRS Seminars on Disruptive Technologies: Videos

"New technologies, and those that represent an evolutionary improvement of an existing tool or process, that exhibit the potential to have large-scale effects on social and economic activity are often referred to as “disruptive” technologies. They can disrupt existing markets, practices, and processes by displacing and replacing incumbent technologies and actors. The emergence of smartphones through the convergence of mobile phone and computing technologies, for example, profoundly affected the telecommunications sector— including its relevant market actors, service offerings, and hardware and software infrastructures. It has also impacted how individuals and groups communicate through voice, text, images, and video; consume and create media; access and disseminate information; and engage in leisure activities.

The positive and negative short-, medium-, and long-term effects emerging technologies may have are difficult to predict and present a range of issues for Congress. Since the development trajectories and potential outcomes of emerging technologies are uncertain—some that show great promise may ultimately fail to develop as expected and others may have unintended yet profound impacts—systematic data to help guide policy development and legislation is sparse.

To support Congress in examining these opportunities and issues, CRS has held a series of seminars for Congress designed to provide an opportunity for congressional staff to better understand the possible impacts of disruptive technologies of interest. 1 In the seminars held to date, over 30 government and private-sector experts discussed technical, economic, policy, and legal aspects of eight disruptive technology topics: advanced battery energy storage, artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, blockchain, commercial spaceflight, cybersecurity, gene editing, and quantum information science. This report describes each of the seminars in the series and provides links to videos of them that are available on the CRS website..."
Distruptive technologies