Mark Zuckerberg has finally proved it: he definitely is not a robot.
Recently, podcaster Lex Fridman invited Zuckerberg to his podcast. At one point during the two-hour interview, Fridman asked the Meta CEO to prove he’s not a robot by completing a CAPTCHA challenge – which he completed easily.
Fridman asked Zuckerberg to “circle all the traffic lights, please,” in a funny real-life version of the tests we have to take now and then on the internet to prove that we’re human. Zuckerberg’s answers during the interview were good enough to convince Fridman that he, indeed, is a Homo sapiens.
CAPTCHAs have been around for a long time. These tests were first created in the 2000s by researchers from Carnegie Mellon University. Many people don’t realize how interesting these tests actually are.
For instance, “CAPTCHA” is actually an acronym. It stands for “Completely Automated Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.” So, in case you didn’t know, that is the truth behind these challenges. All the quizzes or puzzles you have to solve whenever you want to access a website, complete a form, or perhaps check out on e-commerce sites are “modernized” versions of Turing tests, which were first introduced by pioneering computer scientist Alan Turing to differentiate humans from machines.
The internet has doubted Zuckerberg’s humanity for a long time. The topic has been the subject of many memes and even petitions to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to conduct a Turing test on the Meta CEO. People have gotten what they asked, as Fridman happens to work at MIT.
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