The drone of Mastodontic AI hovers silently over a handful of red-earth huts. It has traveled 800 kilometers, launched from a super-technological aircraft carrier anchored in the bay, powered by hydrogen and good intentions. In Palo Alto, the team of aerospace engineers has made a historic decision: solve the drought of an African village.
The project lead, a twenty-four-year-old with three MIT degrees obtained by blazing through thousands of multiple-choice tests at the speed of light, stares at the climate-controlled monitors. The drone sends terabytes of data: thermal mapping, soil humidity, orbital scans.
The algorithm calculates the optimal solution in 325 milliseconds: ban inefficient clouds, optimize resident migration flows through a geolocation app, implant a new species of mosquitoes, impose bipedal locomotion on wildlife.
Below, in the village, an elder watches the drone, turns to the tribal chief and says: “The white man’s fan has returned. If only they knew that all we need is a rubber tube ten meters long and to move the stone blocking the well”. But the stone has no IP address, so for Mastodontic AI it does not exist.
This article is released under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0). You may share, translate, adapt and reproduce it freely, including for commercial purposes, with attribution to Raffaele Mangialardi and a link to https://www.mangialardi.it/the-multiple-choice-empire-strikes-back .












