- A podcaster jokingly asked Mark Zuckerberg to complete a CAPTCHA to prove he's not a robot.
- The Meta CEO circled the squares that included traffic lights on a piece of paper.
- Zuckerberg has fielded jokes for years that he acts robotically, and he's acknowledged that he does.
Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has long fielded online jokes that he acts like a robot, and an interviewer recently referenced them before a two-hour chat.
Podcaster and computer scientist Lex Fridman published his interview with the executive on Monday, covering a wide range of topics from the metaverse and problems with social media, to his nightly routine with his two young daughters.
Fridman jokingly asked Zuckerberg to complete a sort of CAPTCHA, the image puzzles users are prompted to solve in order to prove to a computer that they're human, not a robot.
"Can you circle all the traffic lights, please? Fridman asked Zuckerberg, handing him a piece of paper. The CEO appeared genuinely amused and grinned widely as he circled the correct squares.
"You actually did it," Fridman said with a laugh. "That is a very impressive performance."
Some have referred to Zuckerberg as "Zuckerborg" for his communications skills that can sometimes come of as rehearsed or impersonal.
And the internet had a field day making memes of him after he was grilled in front of Congress in 2018 over his company's handling of millions of users' data in what has become known as the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Many of the online posts compared him to the android character Data from "Star Trek."
Even "Saturday Night Live" ran a parody in 2018 with cast member Alex Moffat playing a robotic Zuckerberg.
For his part, Zuckerberg acknowledged his robotic cadence in a 2019 interview with Lester Holt of NBC News. The reporter asked the CEO if he was "the best communicator for Facebook."
Zuckerberg responded: "Historically, I've had a very hard time expressing myself. I just come across as robotic. This is one of the things that... I'm growing up, I need to get better at, in running this company."