"I'm sorry!": Zuck shows human side in hot mic slip-up at Trump's AI love-in
Billionaire flubs lines as he joins other tech titans at the White House for an oozingly sycophantic meeting with The Donald.
OpenAI recently binned a "sycophantic" ChatGPT update after it began sucking up to users a little too ickily.
So we'd advise anyone concerned about AI "glazing" to look away now as we report on tech leaders' supremely fawning meeting with President Trump at the White House.
On Friday, bosses of the world's top AI firms flocked to Washington to kiss the ring at a Trumpian love-in, issuing some of the most staggeringly obsequious corporate comments we've ever seen.
The only person who seemed to go off message was Mark Zuckerberg, who has been hard at work rebranding himself from the "Big Zucker" of old to a beer-drinking, flag-waving, Joe Rogan-adjacent libertarian tech bro surfer dude.
Zuck was sitting next to the President, who turned to him and asked: "How much are you spending, would you say, over the next few years?"
The Meta billionaire responded: "Oh gosh! I mean, I think it's probably going to be something like, I don't know at least $600 billion through '28 in the US, yeah."
"That's a lot!" Trump purred.
"It's significant," Zuck agreed.
For Zuck's sake! What went wrong at the White House?
But during a quiet moment, the tech titan leaned into Trump, perhaps (we speculate) forgetting his mic was on and appeared to say: "I'm sorry I wasn't ready...I wasn't sure what number you wanted to go with."
Trump then laughed and said something like "ha, ha - he wasn't ready" to his wife, Melania.
The actual words both men said in this hot mic conversation were hard to hear, so they may have said something different.
Let us know if you think we're wrong and we'll correct the record.
READ MORE: ChatGPT will call the cops on its most dangerous users, OpenAI announces
We know that Zuck is highly sensitive and has famously hinted that he finds public speaking difficult.
"I'm the most awkward person," he told podcaster Theo Von in April 2025. "People have been calling me a robot online for 20 years."
This time around, though, we don't think Zuck has to worry as Trump appears to take the slight slip-up in good humour.
Zuck delivered other comments at the White House much more smoothly.
"This is quite a group to get together - and I think all of the companies here are making huge investments in the country in order to build out data centres and infrastructure to power the next wave of innovation…" he said.
AI sycophancy IRL
Other tech CEOs took turns to kiss Trump's ass.
Tim Cook, Apple CEO, said: "I want to thank you for setting the tone such that we could make a major [$600 billion] investment in the United States and have some key manufacturing, advanced manufacturing, here. I think that says a lot about your focus and your leadership and your focus on innovation.
"I also want to thank you for helping American companies around the world. This is a very key, key thing, and I really enjoy working with your Administration.”
Other key, key tech leaders shared the sentiment as they addressed the God Emperor.
Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, opined: "Thank you for being such a pro-business, pro-innovation President. It’s a very refreshing change. We’re very excited to see what you’re doing to make our companies and our entire country so successful.
"The investment that’s happening here, the ability to get the power of the industry back in the United States, is going to set us up for a long period of great success leading the world — and I don’t think that would be happening without your leadership."
READ MORE: Is OpenAI boss Sam Altman a victim of the dead internet - or the person who killed it?
Then Google co-founder Sergey Brin gushed: "It’s a real incredible inflection point right now in AI and the fact that your Administration is supporting our companies instead of fighting with them - it’s hugely important. It’s a global race and I think we’re at the cusp where these AI models are about to become profoundly useful… so we’re very grateful for your Administration’s support."
It might all sound a bit yucky, but the tech industry's alignment with the White House is likely to be good news for innovation in the US - and perhaps for the whole of humanity (if you'll forgive some slight sycophancy of our own).
Or it will drop the regulatory barriers which are slowing the development of AGI, massively increase p(doom) and accelerate the demise of our species at the hands of the machines we've created.
Let's hope it's the former!
