Cleo Abram Answers The Web's Most Searched Questions

Hi, I'm Cleo Abram.

And this is the Wired Autocomplete Interview.

[upbeat music]

Cleo Abram podcast.

Oh, that's so cool.

I don't have one.

[upbeat music]

Alright, what does Cleo Abram do?

I'm a YouTuber.

I make a show called Huge If True.

It's a really optimistic show about technology and science

and how we can use both of those things

to make the world better.

Is Cleo Abram a scientist?

No, I'm a journalist,

which means I get to talk to scientists all the time

about the things that they know best

and that they're most passionate about.

And then my job is to try to better understand the context

and explain how that science applies

to people like you and me.

Cleo Abram YouTube.

It's my home base.

It's my creative home.

I've been on YouTube for maybe seven or eight years now,

and love what I do so, so much.

Alright, Cleo Abram Boston Dynamics.

I went to visit Boston Dynamics and got to meet

and also shove their humanoid robot named Atlas,

who has since been retired.

They have a new humanoid robot now,

which I would love to go meet.

When I shoved this robot,

it reacted almost like a human would

in the sense that it stumbled backward

on one of its legs and caught itself.

The difference was that I was shoving it incredibly hard.

I felt genuinely guilty about shoving this humanoid robot,

and it recovered beautifully every single time.

I couldn't physically shove it over.

And then actually, because I felt so guilty,

I asked one of the Boston Dynamics engineers

to shove me in the same way I had shoved Atlas.

I didn't fall over, but I did stumble back

quite a bit farther than Atlas did.

[Director] I thought you said you were gonna say

you asked to give it a hug.

I should have asked to give it a hug.

I don't know if they would've allowed me to hug it.

Next time [laughing].

Cleo Abram and MKBHD.

I've collaborated with Marques a couple times.

One episode on quantum computing, which was awesome.

We got to go see IBM's quantum computer.

It helps me better understand why the heck

people are talking about quantum computing

as a scary thing that's gonna interrupt all encryption,

and we have to get ready for it, et cetera, et cetera.

And also, somehow it's gonna help scientific progress.

One of the answers to that question

is that to model quantum dynamics,

it may or may not be helpful to have a quantum computer.

That's one area people are really excited about.

So we went and we saw these quantum computers

that look like the craziest chandeliers

you've ever seen in your life.

If there's ever an old quantum computer

that no one ever wants anymore,

I would love to hang it in my house.

Cleo Abram AI.

I'm real.

I'm interested in AI.

I think that there are lots of applications

that could make people's lives better,

and lots that I'm concerned about.

So for example, I did a story recently

where I talked about AlphaFold.

AlphaFold tries to better predict

the shape of a protein by its amino acid basis,

which is important because you can then

create better medicines for people more quickly.

On the flip side, I talk a lot about AI

and the need to find the right balance

between using it for good

and confining its worst applications.

For example, I made a video for Vox about Deepfakes

and the use of Deepfakes on the internet.

I have made a video that I'm really proud of

that tries to explore how AI is being used in music

and what the implications might be

for artists and musicians.

AI music.

I find this area totally fascinating.

I have spoken with the CEO of Spotify,

Daniel Ek, about this at length.

I think the general topic of AI music

is obviously thorny and nuanced.

If you get more and more specific,

you start to see really interesting things

in the way the technology actually works,

the way that it's trained,

the way that it might help or hurt musicians in the future.

One of the things that I think is important

for people to understand about AI music

is the music industry actually has pretty detailed systems

for how to treat things like sampling or referencing

previous music and previous music tracks in existing songs.

There's sort of a flow chart

of whether you are specifically drawing

from the actual recording of the song,

which requires a certain kind of licensing fee,

or you're drawing from the composition,

which requires something else.

And so the question of who gets paid

based on what you were inspired by

and what the end result is of your music

has actually been, I won't say well answered,

'cause it's constantly being debated

within the music industry.

But there are lots and lots of rules for this.

And so the interesting question

that I've done a lot of research on and made videos about is

how does AI music either fit into the already existing

music system for paying artists

and making sure that people can also be inspired

by what they hear,

versus where does it actually break that system

and where do we need new rules?

Cleo Abram CERN.

I went to visit CERN recently.

I got to see what's called the Large Hadron Collider,

which is this enormous underground tunnel basically,

where they have a smaller tube

that they send protons flying around in opposite directions

and they speed them up faster and faster and faster.

And then when they're going fast enough,

they collide them together in these massive detectors

so that they can better understand

what kinds of particles were present close to the Big Bang,

and how did they relate to each other,

and how might we better understand

the universe that we live in.

This was a stretch for me

'cause I had to try to understand particle physics

and how the heck that would apply to my daily life.

But it was so, so cool to see this enormous machine.

[board banging] That's fun.

Okay, Cleo Abram podcast.

Oh, that's so cool.

I don't have one.

I didn't realize that this was a big search.

Maybe now I'll start a podcast.

I've been thinking about it because

I do these long interviews with people,

some of the most interesting people to me in the world.

And I end up with like two hours of conversation.

But then I only use maybe six or seven minutes in my videos

'cause it's a pretty tightly crafted story.

So I've been thinking about how to make those

into a podcast,

but I haven't quite figured out how to do that yet.

Cleo Abram Twitter.

I mean, I do think Twitter is a really important place

for discourse between people who have something to share.

So whether that's a specific scientific area.

I know artists that are sort of

sharing things back and forth on Twitter.

I'm a part of some specific communities

that help each other do research.

And so when I have a topic area in mind,

I will very often go to Twitter or X.

What are we calling it now?

And search for that topic

and DM people who seem to be talking about that topic

from a scientific perspective

and try to better understand it.

Cleo Abram spacesuit.

I tried on NASA's new spacesuit that they're planning to use

to take the next humans to the moon.

It was awesome and it was really, really heavy.

They didn't share exactly what the weight was.

It was maybe 150 pounds, 160 pounds.

I was actually hanging a little bit

from straps on the ceiling to mimic what it would feel like

if I were actually on the moon.

I think the request from NASA

to a company called Axiom Space,

which built the actual space suits,

was that they needed to make a suit

that could fit I think 90% of the American population,

which is a big ask.

And I believe that they succeeded.

This spacesuit is very, very cool.

Cleo Abram X-59.

I went to see a supersonic plane.

And the thing about supersonic planes

is that we used to have them and now we don't.

So the Concorde was a very famous supersonic plane

that used to take people on flights over water.

And the reason why they could only go over water

was supersonic planes are super loud.

You might have heard of a sonic boom.

The thing that I didn't fully understand

before I began doing research into supersonic planes

is that a supersonic boom doesn't just happen once.

It's not a boom when they cross the sound barrier.

It's a boom that happens the whole time

over everywhere they fly over.

So if there were supersonic planes

going back and forth over us right now,

we would hear sort of a car door slamming

a little while away.

Over and over and over again that can get really annoying.

And so the FAA banned the use of supersonic planes over land

and a bunch of other countries did the same,

which hurt the business of supersonic planes,

which meant they were only flying over the ocean,

which meant that eventually the Concorde shut down.

The X-59 is a new plane that NASA is working on

to try and see if we can bring back supersonic planes

by making them quieter.

If you look at this plane,

it's very, very long and it's flat on the bottom.

And what they're trying to do

is send all of the sound waves up so that they go away

from people on the ground who might hear them.

[board banging]

Cleo Abram Apple Vision Pro.

I made a video about it.

I think the Apple Vision Pro is an interesting example

of the path toward a future

that I would love to see with VR and AR

and the way that those technologies

actually feel to you and me.

What I was most excited about was

AR or VR, or any of these tools

as the next step in the progression

from telegram to telephone to FaceTime

to feeling like you're actually in person with someone.

Cleo Abram quantum computing.

I love quantum computers.

I think they're so crazy looking and so fascinating.

When I was doing research on quantum computers,

I spoke to a quantum physicist

who gave me an analogy that I really, really love,

which is, I was thinking about quantum computers

as a more powerful computer,

but that's really not the way to think about it.

It's not that we're gonna have

quantum iPhones in the near future.

It's much more likely that scientists and researchers

are gonna use quantum computers to explore other areas.

And the analogy that the physicist gave me was,

if you think about the progress

up until this point of computers

as making cars faster and faster,

he said the better way to think about quantum computers

is that they are not faster cars, they're boats.

And so it allows us, hopefully,

to explore other different areas,

and there would be things that a normal computer is good for

and things that a quantum computer is good for.

For example, exploring the quantum physics

that is at the core of the biological world.

A quantum computer might be able to really help with that

in ways that a normal computer might not.

Cleo Abram Emmy.

A show that I was part of on YouTube

called Glad You Asked, was nominated for an Emmy.

I sat on a computer and looked at the ceremony.

So this must have been during lockdowns.

We didn't win.

Cleo Abram dog.

My dog is the best.

His name is Thor.

He's a 10 pound probably Australian Shepherd.

He's the cutest thing to ever exist

and I'm just, ugh, he's the best.

[board bangs] [gentle music]

That's all the boards.

Those questions were great.

A lot of them were about topics

that we've covered on the show.

I love the question about my dog

'cause I could talk to you about him all the time.

See you next time.