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How long do these “moonshots” have until they are considered failures? It seems like an anti pattern that some huge, futzy organization launches a “moonshot” t
by prepend 3y ago
How long do these “moonshots” have until they are considered failures?
It seems like an anti pattern that some huge, futzy organization launches a “moonshot” to explain why they burn money on something without needing a return because it’s a “moonshot.”
JFK gave his “to the moon” speech in 1962, targeting 1970 [0]. And the USG did it. So 8 years was the first one. It cost a ton of money and was successful and had massive returns culturally, scientifically, and financially.
Google launched its X/moonshot org in 2010 [1]. 14 years later, have any “landed?”
It seems like orgs should stop using this terminology unless they are seriously committed.
The USG launched their “cancer moonshot” [2] for very good reasons, and very sympathetic, but their goal was by 2020 and they didn’t make it. I think we should increase cancer research funding, but draping it in hyperbole is negative when we don’t achieve what we said we targeted.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_choose_to_go_to_the_Moon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_choose_to_go_to_the_Moon
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_(company) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_(company)
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/21st_Century_Cures_Act#Medical_research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/21st_Century_Cures_Act#Medical...
- brycewray 3y agoThe main JFK speech about the manned moon landing was May 25, 1961, before a joint session of Congress. The “we choose to go to the moon” speech at Houston’s Rice University in the fall of 1962 was more a case of pumping up public enthusiasm about the very expensive program, given that polls — especially in that mid-term election year — were showing growing doubts among voters that the expenditure was worth it.
- ke88y 3y ago> Google launched its X/moonshot org in 2010 [1]. 14 years later, have any “landed?” Waymo, Brain, and Chronicle
- rand1239 3y agoDo any of them generate profit?
- julianlam 3y agoI haven't heard of the latter two, and Waymo is currently in development/testing and is not nearly as ubiquitous as it seems to be in the States.
- tehlike 3y agoBrain is everything you know of today in GenAI space, and many more internally used products and technologies.
- sparrc 3y agoHow much of that was actually generated directly from "Google X"? Seems to me that most of it came out of DeepMind, which was just a run-of-the-mill big company buys innovative startup type of acquisition.
- ke88y 3y agoBrain and DeepMind were separate orgs until very very recently. Google's GenAI stuff was mostly out of Brain and its RL stuff was mostly out of DeepMind.
- damontal 3y agoI thought moon shot was in reference to the rescue effort for Apollo 13.
- philwelch 3y agoI think in retrospect, we can consider the Manhattan Project another moonshot, at least purely on a technical level, and that only took three years. The thing about moonshots is that you can't just declare a moonshot by fiat and expect anything to happen. The state of science and technology needs to have reached a point where a significant breakthrough is imminent, given sufficient investment. This is where atomic science was in 1942 and rocketry was in 1960. Which is why the historic examples of moonshots didn't actually arise from government fiat, but from scientists. The Manhattan Project famously started from a letter, signed by multiple prominent physicists including Einstein, warning the US government that the invention of an atomic bomb was imminent enough that they feared Germany would accomplish it first. The moon landing was a little more complicated, but for the entire 20th century, rocket scientists understood it was possible to explore space and did everything they could to try and convince various governments to fund their research[1]; the imminent achievability of a moon landing by 1960 fueled fears in the US government that the Soviets might beat them there. So who are the cancer researchers promising that any sort of "moonshot" breakthrough is imminent? Let me know if there is one, but the cancer moonshot idea seems to have originated in politics, and once politicians start promising "cancer moonshots"--even if no such thing is likely to be achievable--it's not likely cancer researchers are going to complain or refuse the new source of potential funding. Unlike the government, Google at least has or had the potential to be the type of organization that actually listened to the relevant technical experts instead of being dictated by the whims of random executives receiving revelations from the Good Idea Fairy. But I agree with you that it doesn't seem like they've delivered. Finally, I think even calling these projects "moonshots" sets them up for failure in a certain way. If you said "we can and will land on the Moon" in 1962, people will be impressed. If you say "we're going to achieve a 'cancer moonshot'", what does that mean? Does that mean you're going to cure cancer? No, because if you were going to cure cancer, you'd say "we can and will cure cancer". Except (as far as I know) that would be a lie, so instead they say "cancer moonshot", which doesn't mean anything. Any goal that's ambitious enough to be called a "moonshot" is a goal that you can just say out loud and it will impress people a lot more than calling it a "moonshot". [1] Yes, this is my way of glossing over the V-2; I don't morally endorse Von Braun's work during the war and this is entirely beside the point I'm making here.