Nov 18, 2028 8:40 am Bangalore.

Rushing through the busy road, Janani was riding her scooty against the on going metro work and obvious office hours traffic.

With airpods on her ears, attending conference call with her office friends, she was speaking louder to compensate the traffic noise, “C’mon guys, do something to postpone our presentation to 9:30. I’ll be there…”

“We gave you one job… To be here on time and you missed it…”, said Vivek in the con-call. Everyone on the call started laughing. “Shut up, Vivek, Just that you reached office today on time, don’t advise me” Janani replied with a quirky smile in her face. “Ok, Ride safe and be here idiot, we’ll take care”, Vivek assured and disconnected the call.

It was the Yearly All hands meeting at Maveric Global Solutions and most of the senior offshore Executives and Directors have arrived to the Bangalore office to discuss the on-going AI trend and how to implement it and compete the business race. Janani and her team was assigned to deliver a 15min presentation on their team’s capabilities and technical expertise on LLM, Neural Networks and Reinforcement Learning Algo development.

Reaching office gate by 9:25, Janani swiftly ran to the lift and pressed the button multiple times. Unlike other days the lift corridor was at pin drop silence since all the employees are gathered in the meeting room at 8th floor. The lift arrived and no one was inside it. Janani jumped quickly and pressed 8th floor button.

Shortly on pressing the button, the automated voice spoke, “Please check you mobile to proceed further”. Confused and in panic, Janani again pressed the buttons. The automated voice spoke again, “Please check your mobile to proceed further”. This time Janani took her phone from her bag and it had 1 Message Notification from an Unknown number. It read,

Hey Janani,
I know you’re in a rush, but let me borrow a few heartbeats of your time. There’s a 5% chance we’ll cross paths in the next few days. If we do, there’s a 60% chance I’ll get to celebrate your next 12 birthdays with you — and let’s be honest, people usually celebrate 12 birthdays in a row only with their soulmate.
But even if we don’t meet, the universe still gives me a 50% chance of being your soulmate.
Now, if you’re married to your soulmate…
What’s the chance that you and I are married?

Reply it with your answer and the lift will take you to 8th floor.

Confused and terrified, Janani couldn’t react for a moment after reading this. Her b’day is in next 2 days. She instantly came out of the lift and searched for anyone nearby. The ground floor was in grave silence. For a moment she thought about taking the stair. But when looked into her watch, the time was 9:28 am and she got just 2 minutes to reach 8th floor. Even if she ran all the way, she could drench herself in sweats and that won’t make a good first impression infront of the off-shore delegates. Thinking all these, she made up her mind to try using the lift one more time and got into the lift. The same automated voice spoke again, “Please reply with your answer to proceed further”. Confused and perplexed, not having enough time to process what’s happening, Janani randomly replied, ’75’ to the message. Instantly, she got a reply notification to message,

“I would be thrilled if there’s 75% chance that we end up as a couple. But Bayes theorm says it’s 50.5%. Still it 0.5% more than a 50-50 odds. Let’s hope that our chances lies in the 0.5% extra probability”

And the lift started moving gently to the 8th floor. She started feeling like in a dream but too close to reality.

Even though she know about Bayes theorm, not having much time to think about this, she walked swiftly to the meeting room and started looking for her friends. Seeing her from a distant corner, Vivek signaled her to come to the other side of the desk where they had the presentation ready to be projected. She wanted to talk about this mysterious message to Vivek. So she called him over and said, “Hey, Vivek. I need to say something to you…”. Before she could finish, Vivek said, “No time now, the Offshore delegates came and already you’re late. We have to start the presentation” and went backstage to check whether all mic and speakers are working properly.

All Offshore Senior Executives took their allocated seats and the meeting started on time sharp 9:30. The usual welcoming talks, last year results and on going year business projection were discussed. Now they called upon the Janani and Team to present their ppt.

Vivek started explaining the needs for implementing AI to streamline their code development time and it’s cost cutting advantages. Following Vivek, Junior Engineers of Janani’s Team, explained each one’s technical expertise on the AI algos and LLMs. Janani, being the Technical lead, was keenly watching their teams presentation and the Off-shore executive team’s reactions.

Sean, one of the senior offshore executive, interrupted while Kavin (Junior developer) was explaining about LLMs. “I don’t want to hear anything like AI this, AI that like every other social media. The word AI has been highly misused in recent days.”, said Sean with a calm clarity in his face. Everyone in the room got stunned for a moment. Sean continued, “If we can even think about out sourcing AI related development to India, we should be convinced that your team has a strong foundational knowledge that goes beyond coding”.

Janani jumped in saying, “Sure Sean. We got you. Our team has the expertise to develop AI algos from scratch without any 3rd party tools”. Raising his eyebrows and gently standing up, Sean continued, “It feels too optimistic to hear this. However, we are not 100% sure it’s going to be possible by your team.” No one spoke a word. Wanting to ease the serious situation, Sean said, “Ok, Let’s lighten things up a bit. Lemme put it through a riddle question. If your team could solve it, we can think about sharing the AI development works to Indian team”. Everyone was curiously waiting for the question. Sean put it out,

There’s a 5% chance we’ll buy a share in next few days. If we do, there’s a 60% chance, the share will grow continuously and gets doubled in the next 12 days. And if a stock can double in next twelve days then it’s called a Hidden Gem Stock.
But even if the stock didn’t double in next 12 days, there’s still a 50% chance that it’s a Hidden Gem Stock.
Now, assume you have bought a stock.
What’s the chance that the stock you’ve bought is a Hidden Gem?

“You can have 30 minutes to get the answer”, Sean ended his question and sat on this chair. Everyone started doing their calculation except Janani, who got freezed on hearing the question. It’s exactly same as the mysterious message she got on the lift. She immediately took her mobile to check the message but it was not there. Disappeared from her inbox.

Vivek came near her and said “Why are you standing still here and what are you doing with your mobile? Let’s do something to find the answer. Do you have any clue where to start?”. She looked at his face but don’t know what to say or more precisely where to begin.

Gathering her courage, she said “It’s 50.5%” standing in middle of the stage facing Sean straight in his eyes. Every one got stunned for a moment and Vivek standing next to her whispered, “Is it correct? You didn’t even start doing any calculations..”

Sean without any reaction, asked her, “Can you prove it?”. Janani answered, “It’s a few steps of Bayes theorm.” and continued walking to the white board to prove it.

Finishing it, Janani turned back to Sean and said

“And that sums up to 0.505 aka 50.5%” Sean smiled with raised eyebrows and turned to Janani’s Manager and said, “You’re basically running an IQ farm here. That’s correct and I’m impressed. Looks like I had to keep up my word. I’ll re-iterate through the on going AI development project and make sure to outsource some of it to this team here.”

Everyone started clapping with joy and started congratulating Janani. And the meeting ended there and everyone left for lunch.

-An hour later in the Cafeteria:

“I never knew you’re SakutalaDevi’s sister”, Vivek teased Janani sarcastically in the lunch. Everyone laughed except Janani who’s still thinking about the incident. “How did you know that it has to be solved using Bayes theorm in the first place?”, one of the junior engineer asked. She couldn’t answer anything to them.

Vivek continued his sarcastic comment by saying, “Don’t say you closed your eyes and asked your favourite Godess and she gave it to you. There was a guy who said it already and died before reaching his 40s”, comparing her to Math Prodigy Ramanujan.

Smiling a bit Janani replied, “What would you all think about me if I say, today when I took the lift to the 8th floor, I got the answer to the question which Sean was about to ask in the next 1 hour in my mobile message inbox?”

Vivek replied, “Like every other normal humans – That you’re a witch waiting for a right moment to reveal yourself and take over the world”.

Smiling for a moment, Janani replied, “Yeah..that’s me. And the first thing I would do before taking over the world is to use Avada Kedavra on you”, and started leaving from there.

“Where are you going Mrs.Voldemort?” shouted Vivek and Janani replied “I’ve got lot of things to process in my mind today” and swiftly left to home.

-To be Continued