“If we continue to build for people and not with people, we won’t have a say in what this technology will look like or do in ten or twenty years.” — Salima Bhimani

Finally some inventive news in our summer of Luddite discontent. Salima Bhimani spent six and a half years at Google X’s moonshot factory as its first Chief Strategist for Responsible Tech. So thank her for the (responsible) magic of Alphabet’s Waymo, Wing, and DeepMind. In her new book, Invent Now, Bhimani provides a map for the next wave of moonshots. No, she speculates, they probably won’t come out of Silicon Valley. But, yes, they will come from somewhere.

Her invention was formed long before Silicon Valley. She remembers staring at the Toronto subway from her father’s magazine stall and wondering not where the trains went but “what is our relationship to this tube?” An ethnographer by training, Bhimani arrived at Google X from a world of government and nonprofits where “constraint was bread and butter.” At Alphabet, of course, she was spoilt with endless money and runway. Although that didn’t always guarantee moonshot success.

Moonshots fail, she explains, because they are always more than technologies. They are ecosystems, and they need the approval of regulators, communities, and consumers. Take, for example, the abortive Sidewalk Labs, Alphabet’s smart-city bet in her hometown of Toronto, which failed to recognize the practical realities of utopian city-planning.

So what will be the most dramatic moonshot of the twenty-first century? No, she says, it probably won’t be consumer rocketships to Mars or a cure for cancer. Instead, it will be about a post-labor society. What is human purpose when it’s not work? No wonder such an outrageous idea probably won’t come out of work-obsessed Silicon Valley.

Five Takeaways

• A Nuanced Optimist. Neither the abundance camp nor the scarcity camp: “abundance in some areas and scarcity in others.” Hold the tension between tech’s harms and its opportunities — with a discerning eye.

• From the Toronto Subway to the Moonshot Factory. From staring at the trains above her father’s magazine stall to asking Alphabet’s CEOs the awkward questions — constraint and endless runway, both informing everything she builds.

• She Folded Her Own Moonshot. Her post-Alphabet drone-detection startup could help cities — or enable “all kinds of nefarious things.” They folded it: “the implications are not something that any of us could have lived with.”

• Moonshots Are Ecosystems. Wing isn’t drones — it’s regulators, safety, and porches. Sidewalk Labs died on data distrust in her own Toronto: an early tremor of the data-center earthquake. Waymo’s sixteen years show what perseverance buys.

• Step In, Not Stepped Out. Build with people, not for people — or we won’t have a say in what AI becomes. If incubated spaces built this much power, imagine unincubated ones. The century’s biggest moonshot: human purpose when it’s not work.

About Keen On America

Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen.

Website: https://keenon.tv/ Substack: https://keenon.substack.com/ YouTube: https://youtube.com/@KeenOnShow

Buy Invent Now: bookshop.org

Chapters:

00:00:31 Introduction: a Friday antidote to the Luddite summer
00:02:23 Why the Luddite lurch doesn’t surprise her
00:02:57 Why believe the optimists? (“A more nuanced optimist”)
00:05:24 Can she really see the future?
00:05:49 The Toronto subway: staring at the big metal tube
00:08:14 Abundance or scarcity? Neither camp
00:09:49 Who is Invent Now for?
00:11:15 Where the next moonshots come from: convergence
00:12:54 Six and a half years inside the moonshot factory
00:15:11 Wing, drones, and the good-and-bad problem
00:16:21 “We folded our drone company”: a confession
00:18:43 The moonshot factory as VC: mostly losing bets
00:19:00 Sidewalk Labs: the one that got away
00:20:37 An early tremor of the data-center earthquake
00:23:07 Why did Google fumble Hinton’s moonshot?
00:25:31 Demis, Brin, and the space to be brilliant
00:28:07 Life after the Google badge
00:29:06 Ed Luce’s “AI phobia” and the self-hating entrepreneurs
00:31:33 What Waymo teaches: sixteen years of perseverance
00:34:33 The biggest moonshot of the 21st century? Labor
00:36:28 What is human purpose when it’s not work?
00:38:06 AI wasn’t born yesterday
00:39:30 Build with people, not for people
00:40:50 “Step in, not be stepped out”