Mark Zuckerberg tells gran to encourage her granddaughters to ‘*be* the nerd’

When Mark Zuckerberg announced plans to build his own Jarvis-style personal assistant on Sunday, he won plaudits from AI evangelists but his reply to a comment on the post could win him even more kudos from everyone who’d like to see a greater degree of equality in the tech space.

“I keep telling my grand daughters to Date the nerd in school, he may turn out to be a Mark Zuckerberg!,” wrote Darlene Hackemer Loretto.

Read more: Mark Zuckerberg’s New Year’s resolution is to build his own Jarvis-style personal assistant

In response, the Facebook founder and CEO wrote: “Even better would be to encourage them to *be* the nerd in their school so they can be the next successful inventor!

It is worth noting however that Facebook has some way to go when it comes to achieving gender parity among its own employees. A report released in late in 2015 showed that just 32% of the social network’s US employees are female.

Featured image: Maurizio Pesce via Flickr.