Moonshot is a term you will occasionally hear used in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) community.
If you ever hear it in a discussion about AI in Healthcare, take note. It’s a red flag.
You see, although ”moonshot” refers to a large-scale project – just out the current technologies reach – attempting to achieve a goal over years, from a marketing perspective the word moonshot implies much more: It’s an attempt to co-opt one of the greatest achievements of mankind for their new software effort!
Consider this. The Apollo Program combined the resources of a country with the imagination of the world, working towards the goal putting the feet of a human being on the moon, looking up at our planet.
This was a history making event. Certainly not a bad thing to align your new AI EHR “moonshot” software with, is it?
But what I suggest that whenever someone in the AI community uses the term moonshot in the healthcare context, change with the term to a “Manhattan Project”.
The Manhattan project was an equally incredible achievement as the Apollo program, perhaps even more so (for example, the Manhattan Project was at its time trying to leverage a new physics which had yet to be proven, whereas the Apollo Program was all about classic physics).
But the Manhattan project had two other substantial differences from the moonshot known as the Apollo Program.
First, the Manhattan Project was clouded in secrecy.
Second, the results, at least retrospectively, are morally ambiguous.
Consider this. The Apollo program was wide open. The people and projects leading up to it, including Mercury and Gemini, were well known to the public. The successes were celebrated and the failures were mourned.
Compare this with the Manhattan Project top-secret nature, where even the Vice President of the United States, Harry Truman, was kept in the dark.
Next, compare the morality of both programs.
Even the most cynical people can’t look at the images of an Earthrise from the surface of the moon, or a video of the first steps of Neil Armstrong, and not feel some sense the nobility of this achievement.
However, in comparison, even today there is significant debate, not just about the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima, but the current political morality of tens of thousands of nuclear warheads scattered throughout the world as a result of the Manhattan Project.
So, when you hear a company deeply involved in AI development in Healthcare use the term moonshot, ask yourself this: Is what they’re doing secret, being done out of public view? Will we look back on their effort and think of the nobility of the human condition or will we be marred in the mud of moral ambiguity?
Answer these questions, then consider the possibility they are really talking about a Manhattan Project.
Be careful.