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AI | Gianni Rodari | Strategy | Projects | Organizational Culture
The Price of a Brain
Why delegating the wrong things risks hollowing out our culture, our learning, and our strategy.
One day, a salesman arrives with a miraculous invention: a machine that does homework. Push a button for math, another for essays, another for geography — everything solved in a minute.
The price is unusual: he doesn’t want money, he wants the child’s brain.
His reasoning is chilling in its simplicity: If the machine does the homework, what use is the brain anymore?
The father, persuaded, agrees. The boy’s brain is taken. Instantly, he becomes weightless. Without thought to anchor him, he floats upward, helpless. Unable even to feed himself, he must be kept locked in a cage.
This is Gianni Rodari’s tale La macchina per fare i compiti (“The Homework Machine”). Written decades ago for children, it reads today like a parable for our uneasy relationship with artificial intelligence.
Our modern homework machine
Generative AI is astonishing. Press a virtual button and you get a draft, a summary, code, a marketing plan, a sales email, a financial…
