Video journalist and creator of ‘Huge If True’ Cleo Abram visits WIRED to answer her most searched questions from Google. Is Cleo Abram a scientist? How often has she collaborated with MKBHD? Does Cleo Abram have a podcast? Why does she love quantum computing? What has Cleo Abram learned about AI and AI music? Does she have a dog? Cleo Abram answers all of these questions and more on the WIRED Autocomplete Interview.
Director: Justin Wolfson
Director of Photography: Charlie Jordan
Editor: Evan Allan
Talent: Cleo Abram
Line Producer: Joseph Buscemi
Associate Producer: Brandon White
Production Manager: Peter Brunette
Production Coordinator: Rhyan Lark
Talent Booker: Mica Medoff
Camera Operator: Christopher Eustache
Sound Mixer: Sean Paulsen
Production Assistant: Sonia Butt
Post Production Supervisor: Christian Olguin
Post Production Coordinator: Ian Bryant
Supervising Editor: Doug Larsen
Assistant Editor: Andy Morell
Director: Justin Wolfson
Director of Photography: Charlie Jordan
Editor: Evan Allan
Talent: Cleo Abram
Line Producer: Joseph Buscemi
Associate Producer: Brandon White
Production Manager: Peter Brunette
Production Coordinator: Rhyan Lark
Talent Booker: Mica Medoff
Camera Operator: Christopher Eustache
Sound Mixer: Sean Paulsen
Production Assistant: Sonia Butt
Post Production Supervisor: Christian Olguin
Post Production Coordinator: Ian Bryant
Supervising Editor: Doug Larsen
Assistant Editor: Andy Morell
Category
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TechTranscript
00:00Hi, I'm Cleo Abram, and this is the Wired Autocomplete Interview.
00:06Cleo Abram podcast? Oh, that's so cool. I don't have one.
00:14All right, what does Cleo Abram do? I'm a YouTuber. I make a show called Huge If True.
00:20It's a really optimistic show about technology and science and how we can use both of those
00:25things to make the world better. No, I'm a journalist, which means I get to talk to
00:31scientists all the time about the things that they know best and that they are most passionate
00:35about. And then my job is to try to better understand the context and explain how that
00:42science applies to people like you and me. It's my home base. It's my creative home.
00:48I've been on YouTube for maybe seven or eight years now and love what I do so, so much. All
00:55right, Cleo Abram, Boston Dynamics. I went to visit Boston Dynamics and got to meet and also
01:01shove their humanoid robot named Atlas, who has since been retired. They have a new humanoid
01:06robot now, which I would love to go meet. When I shoved this robot, it reacted almost like a human
01:12would in the sense that it stumbled backward on one of its legs and caught itself. The difference
01:17was that I was shoving it incredibly hard. I felt genuinely guilty about shoving this humanoid robot
01:23and it recovered beautifully every single time. I couldn't physically shove it over. And then
01:29actually, because I felt so guilty, I asked one of the Boston Dynamics engineers to shove me in
01:35the same way I had shoved Atlas. I didn't fall over, but I did stumble back quite a bit farther
01:39than Atlas did. I thought you said you were going to ask to give it a hug. I should have asked to
01:45give it a hug. I don't know if they would have allowed me to hug it next time. Cleo Abram and MKBHD,
01:51I've collaborated with Marques a couple of times. One episode on quantum computing, which was
01:57awesome. We got to go see IBM's quantum computer. It helps me better understand why the heck people
02:02are talking about quantum computing as a scary thing that's going to interrupt all encryption
02:07and we have to get ready for it, et cetera, et cetera. And also somehow it's going to help
02:11scientific progress. One of the answers to that question is that to model quantum dynamics,
02:16it may or may not be helpful to have a quantum computer. That's one area people are really
02:19excited about. So we went and we saw these quantum computers that look like the craziest chandeliers
02:24you've ever seen in your life. If there's ever an old quantum computer that no one ever wants
02:28anymore, I would love to hang it in my house. Cleo Abram AI. I'm real. I'm interested in AI.
02:34I think that there are lots of applications that could make people's lives better and lots that
02:39I'm concerned about. So for example, I did a story recently where I talked about AlphaFold.
02:44AlphaFold tries to better predict the shape of a protein by its amino acid basis, which is
02:49important because you can then create better medicines for people more quickly. On the flip
02:53side, I talk a lot about AI and the need to find the right balance between using it for good and
03:00confining its worst applications. For example, I made a video for Vox about deep fakes and the use
03:07of deep fakes on the Internet. I have made a video that I'm really proud of that tries to explore
03:13how AI is being used in music and what the implications might be for artists and musicians.
03:19AI music. I find this area totally fascinating. I have spoken with the CEO of Spotify, Daniel Ek,
03:25about this at length. I think the general topic of AI music is obviously thorny and nuanced. If you
03:32get more and more specific, you start to see really interesting things in the way the technology
03:37actually works, the way that it's trained, the way that it might help or hurt musicians in the future.
03:43One of the things that I think is important for people to understand about AI music is
03:47the music industry actually has pretty detailed systems for how to treat things like sampling or
03:54referencing previous music and previous music tracks in existing songs. There's sort of a flow
04:00chart of whether you're specifically drawing from the actual recording of the song, which requires
04:07a certain kind of licensing fee, or you're drawing from the composition, which requires something
04:13else. And so the question of who gets paid based on what you were inspired by and what the end
04:18result is of your music has actually been, I won't say well answered because it's constantly being
04:23debated within the music industry, but there are lots and lots of rules for this. And so the
04:26interesting question that I've done a lot of research on and made videos about is how does AI
04:32music either fit into the already existing music system for paying artists and making sure that
04:37people can also be inspired by what they hear versus where does it actually break that system
04:42and where do we need new rules. Cleo Abrams CERN. I went to visit CERN recently. I got to see what's
04:48called the Large Hadron Collider, which is this enormous underground tunnel, basically, where they
04:53have a smaller tube that they send protons flying around in opposite directions and they speed them
05:00up faster and faster and faster. And then when they're going fast enough, they collide them
05:03together in these massive detectors so that they can better understand what kinds of particles were
05:09present close to the Big Bang and how did they relate to each other and how might we better
05:15understand the universe that we live in. This was a stretch for me because I had to try to understand
05:20particle physics and how the heck that would apply to my daily life, but it was so, so cool to
05:27see this enormous machine. That's fun. Okay. Cleo Abrams podcast. Oh, that's so cool. I don't have
05:37one. I didn't realize that this was a big search. Maybe now I'll start a podcast. I've been thinking
05:42about it because I do these long interviews with people, some of the most interesting people to me
05:48in the world, and I end up with like two hours of conversation, but then I only use maybe six or
05:53seven minutes in my videos because it's a pretty tightly crafted story. So I've been thinking about
05:57how to make those into a podcast, but I haven't quite figured out how to do that yet. Cleo Abrams
06:03Twitter. I mean, I do think Twitter is a really important place for discourse between people who
06:10have something to share. So whether that's a specific scientific area, I know artists that
06:15are sort of sharing things back and forth on Twitter. I'm a part of some specific communities
06:20that help each other do research. And so when I have a topic area in mind, I will very often go
06:26to Twitter and or X, what are we calling it now? And search for that topic and DM people who seem
06:31to be talking about that topic from a scientific perspective and try to better understand it.
06:36Cleo Abrams space suit. I tried on NASA's new space suit that they're planning to use to take
06:41the next humans to the moon. It was awesome. And it was really, really heavy. They didn't share
06:46exactly what the weight was. It was maybe 150 pounds, 160 pounds. I was actually hanging a
06:52little bit from straps on the ceiling to mimic what it would feel like if I were actually on
06:57the moon. I think the request from NASA to a company called Axiom Space, which built the
07:02actual space suits was that they needed to make a suit that could fit I think 90% of the American
07:08population, which is a big ask. And I believe that they succeeded. This space suit is very,
07:15very cool. Cleo Abram X-59. I went to see a supersonic plane. And the thing about supersonic
07:22planes is that we used to have them and now we don't. So the Concorde was very famous supersonic
07:26plane that used to take people on flights over water. And the reason why they could only go over
07:32water was supersonic planes are super loud. You might've heard of a sonic boom. The thing that I
07:37didn't fully understand before I began doing research into supersonic planes is that a
07:41supersonic boom doesn't just happen once. It's not a boom when they cross the sound barrier,
07:45it's a boom that happens the whole time over everywhere they fly over. So if there were
07:51supersonic planes going back and forth over us right now, we would hear sort of a car door
07:56slamming a little while away over and over and over again, that can get really annoying. And so
08:00the FAA banned the use of supersonic planes over land and a bunch of other countries did the same,
08:05which hurt the business of supersonic planes, which meant they were only flying over the ocean,
08:08which meant that eventually the Concorde shut down. The X-59 is a new plane that NASA is working on
08:14to try and see if we can bring back supersonic planes by making them quieter. If you look at
08:18this plane, it's very, very long and it's flat on the bottom. And what they're trying to do is send
08:23all of the sound waves up so that they go away from people on the ground who might hear them.
08:28Cleo Abrams, Apple Vision Pro. I made a video about it. I think the Apple Vision Pro is an
08:33interesting example of the path toward a future that I would love to see with VR and AR and the
08:40way that those technologies actually feel to you and me. What I was most excited about was AR or VR
08:47or any of these tools as the next step in the progression from telegram to telephone to phone
08:55telegram to telephone to FaceTime to feeling like you're actually in person with someone.
09:02Cleo Abrams, quantum computing. I love quantum computers. They're so crazy looking and so
09:06fascinating. When I was doing research on quantum computers, I spoke to a quantum physicist who gave
09:14me an analogy that I really, really love, which is I was thinking about quantum computers as a
09:18more powerful computer, but that's really not the way to think about it. It's not that we're
09:23going to have quantum iPhones in the near future. It's much more likely that scientists and
09:28researchers are going to use quantum computers to explore other areas. And the analogy that the
09:34physicist gave me was if you think about the progress up until this point of computers as
09:39making cars faster and faster, he said the better way to think about quantum computers is that they
09:44are not faster cars, they're boats. And so it allows us, hopefully, to explore other different
09:51areas. And there would be things that a normal computer is good for and things that a quantum
09:56computer is good for. For example, exploring the quantum physics that is at the core of most of the
10:03biological world. A quantum computer might be able to really help with that in ways that a normal
10:07computer might not. Cleo Abram Emmy. A show that I was part of on YouTube called Glad You Asked
10:14was nominated for an Emmy. I sat on a computer and looked at the ceremony. So this must have been
10:20during lockdowns. We didn't win. Cleo Abram dog. My dog is the best. His name is Thor. He's a
10:2810 pound, probably Australian shepherd. He's the cutest thing to ever exist. And I'm just,
10:34he's the best. That's all the boards. Those questions were great. A lot of them were about
10:40topics that we've covered on the show. I love the question about my dog because I could talk to you
10:44about him all the time. See you next time.