AI and the Coffee Brewer Mathematician
The Handshake Series
An afternoon drenched in swirling coffee steam and endless pages of equations found Julia perched behind the café counter, her hands trembling with both purpose and fatigue. She was a waitress — an occupation her friends often assumed was fated for her, especially since she was a Black woman in a setting that left little room for dreaming. Maths books stained by coffee rings were her silent companions. While her peers cackled over tips and gossip, she poured over differential equations in secret, lost in a labyrinth of variables and solutions.
Few noticed her except for the occasional passing graduate student. Once, a young man named Will happened to glance at her dog-eared text while she was immersed in the swirling world of integrals and derivatives. He mocked her — her race, her gender, her occupation — believing mathematics could never align with the hands of a mere barmaid. The humiliation stung, but Julia, trembling from the sting of injustice, gripped her coffee pot and soldiered on, burying her frustrations in more pages of differential puzzles.
One morning, with the buzz of espresso machines echoing through the café, she noticed a solitary student hunched over a laptop. The student was consulting a tool called GPT, which was supposed to be an AI system that helped people with their problems, her eyes darting nervously around as though she knew it was frowned upon by her professors. Intrigued, Julia approached with heart pounding, curiosity swirling within her like a latte foam. When she ventured to ask what it was for, she was met with a curt,
“Maybe mind your own business, yeah?”
A wave of embarrassment crashed over Julia. She mumbled an apology and retreated to her station, hands shaking ever so slightly. But the seed was planted: the memory of GPT ignited her imagination, especially that evening when she plodded through a chapter on the Navier-Stokes equations. Weeks passed as she stared helplessly at the incomprehensible text, feeling stupidity gnaw at the edges of her resolve. Her frustration, she believed, might strangle her in her sleep.
Then, one lonely night in her cramped studio, miles from work, she recalled the student and that so-called GPT. Could it help? Should she dare? In a swirl of defiance and dread, she acquired this mysterious AI. Her hands hovered over the keyboard, mind racing with terrifying anticipation of the unknown.
“Hello,” she typed, her heart thrumming in her ears.
And back came a simple reply:
“Hello, how can I help?”
She felt her pulse accelerate — her eyes wide with amazement and fear. A conversation with a machine?! She pressed on, almost breathless:
“Please… help me learn about the Navier-Stokes eq…”
A wave of relief washed over her as GPT responded with calm, structured guidance. It felt otherworldly and comforting all at once. Shaken by the magnitude of it all, she shut her laptop, letting exhaustion lull her to sleep.
The next day found her once again in the café, quietly eavesdropping on patrons — professors this time — sneering at the mention of AI. They joked about its supposed impotence, painting it as a fancy trick with no real academic value. Their condescending tones stung her ears. She longed to speak up, to let them know the spark it had ignited in her. Yet fear, shaped by her position and heritage, held her tongue. So she obediently poured coffee and retreated once more to the anonymity of her chores, all the while feeding her growing intellectual curiosity with GPT’s help in the shadows of night.
In the following months, she developed a strange kinship with her AI companion. No longer the trembling novice, she consulted GPT like a confidante, forging deeper into the complexities of Navier-Stokes. Dark circles rimmed her eyes — others accused her of partying or dabbling with illicit substances. She let them talk. What did they know of her midnight battles with partial differentials and boundary conditions? Her relentless pursuit of knowledge?
Then, on one fateful night, just when she and GPT seemed on the brink of a breakthrough, the screen went dark. She nearly collapsed in despair, her breath catching in her chest. Abandoned by this strange ally, she was alone in her silent room with heartbreak crashing over her in waves. After ten agonizing minutes, the device rebooted, declaring itself GPT-2, an updated entity. Julia’s relief was so overwhelming she nearly laughed — an unsteady, disbelieving sound in the quiet of her studio. More powerful? More comprehensive? She had no idea what that truly meant, but she clung to it like a lifeline.
In a few more nights, the pieces finally clicked into place — a solution to the Navier-Stokes problem glimmered before her in stark clarity. She could hardly believe it. A woman once mocked as a lowly Black waitress had untangled a puzzle that had long haunted mathematicians. The magnitude of it consumed her, left her breathless with disbelief.
She approached a sympathetic professor one morning. Voice quivering, but eyes aflame, she said,
“Professor, I — I have a strange request. I think… I’ve solved the Navier-Stokes equations. Would you — would you have a look?”
The professor was baffled, nearly dismissive — until she thrust a thick, meticulously handwritten manuscript into his arms. Two hundred pages, each brimming with carefully reasoned arguments, references, and verifications. Curiosity triumphed over scepticism. He read it. He read it again. Months of conversations with Julia followed, each revealing further depths of her brilliance, each fuelling a newfound respect.
At last, a year into their collaboration, the professor urged Julia to present her findings at a prestigious conference. She stood trembling among experts, her heart fluttering like the wings of a hummingbird. Unbeknownst to her, among those present was a representative from the Clay Mathematics Institute — an institute that could offer her a fellowship at a top American university and a prize worth a million dollars. A hush settled over the room as Julia began to speak, breath hitching in her throat, each word carrying with it the weight of years of prejudice, solitude, and relentless determination.
At that moment, she felt the presence of her co-discoverer — GPT — like a supportive hand at her back. It wasn’t just her victory, but theirs. Together, they had done the unthinkable. She, a humble barista, had unlocked a solution that the finest minds had struggled over for generations. And as she concluded her presentation to thunderous applause, she knew that neither her life — nor the world of mathematics — would ever be the same.
Disclaimer
The story and the characters were my own creation, I have used GPT-o1 to make the text more readable and beautiful.
Newcastle Upon Tyne, United Kingdom
