Shadowing Practice: Cleo Abram Answers The Web's Most Searched Questions | WIRED - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Hi, I'm Cleo Abram and this is the Wired Autocomplete interview.
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Cleo Abram podcast!
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Oh that's so cool!
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I don't have one!
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Alright, what does Cleo Abram do?
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I'm a YouTuber.
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I make a show called Huge If True.
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It's a really optimistic show about technology and science
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and how we can use both of those things to make the world better.
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Is Cleo Abram a scientist?
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No, I'm a journalist,
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which means I get to talk to scientists all the time about the things
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that they know best and that they are most passionate about,
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and then my job is to try to better understand the context
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and explain how that science applies to people like you and me.
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Cleo Abram, YouTube.
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It's my home base, it's my creative home.
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I've been on YouTube for maybe seven or eight years now and love what I do so so much.
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All right, Cleo Abram, Boston Dynamics.
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I went to visit Boston Dynamics and got to meet
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and also shove their humanoid robot named Atlas who has since been retired.
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They have a new humanoid robot now which I would love to go meet.
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When I shoved this robot it reacted almost like a human would in the sense
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that it stumbled backward on one of its legs and caught itself.
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The difference was that I was shoving it incredibly hard.
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I felt genuinely guilty about shoving this humanoid robot and it recovered beautifully every single time.
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I couldn't physically shove it over.
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And then actually I, because I felt so guilty,
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I asked one of the Boston Dynamics engineers to shove me in the same way I had shoved Atlas.
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I didn't fall over but I did stumble back quite a bit farther than Atlas did.
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I thought you said you were going to ask to give it a hug.
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I should have asked to give it a hug.
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I I don't know if they would have allowed me to hug it.
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Next time.
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Cleo Abram and MKBHD.
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I've collaborated with Marquez a couple times.
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One episode on quantum computing, which was awesome.
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We got to go see IBM's quantum computer.
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It helps me better understand why the heck people are talking
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about quantum computing as a scary thing that's going to interrupt all encryption and we have to get ready for it,
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et cetera, et cetera.
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And also somehow it's going to help scientific progress.
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One of the answers to that question is that to model quantum dynamics,
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it may or may not be helpful to have a quantum computer.
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That's one area people are really excited about.
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So we went and we saw these quantum computers that look like the craziest chandeliers you've ever seen in your life.
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If there's ever an old quantum computer that no one ever wants anymore,
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I would love to hang it in my house.
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Clio Abram AI.
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I'm real, I'm interested in AI.
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I think that there are lots of applications that could make people's lives better and lots that I'm concerned about.
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So for example,
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I did a story recently where i talked about alpha fold
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alpha fold tries to better predict the shape of a protein by its amino acid bases
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which is important
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because you can then create better medicines for people more quickly
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on the flip side i talk a lot about ai
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and the need to find the right balance between using it for good
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and confining its worst applications for example i made a video for for Vox about deepfakes
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and the use of deepfakes on the internet,
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I have made a video that I'm really proud of
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that tries to explore how AI is being used in music and what the implications might be for artists and musicians.
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AI music.
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I find this area totally fascinating.
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I have spoken with the CEO of Spotify,
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Daniel Ek, about this at length.
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I think the general topic of AI music is obviously thorny and nuanced.
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If you get more and more specific,
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you start to see really interesting things in the way the technology actually works,
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the way that it's trained,
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the way that it might help or hurt musicians in the future.
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One of the things
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that I think is important for people to understand about AI
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music is the music industry actually has pretty detailed systems for how to treat things like sampling
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or referencing previous music and previous music tracks in existing songs.
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There's sort of a flow chart of whether you're specifically drawing from the actual recording of the song,
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which requires a certain kind of licensing fee,
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or you're drawing from the composition, which requires something else.
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And so the question of who gets paid based on what you were inspired by
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and what the end result is of your music has actually been,
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I won't say well answered because it's constantly being debated within the music industry,
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but there are lots and lots of rules for this.
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And so the interesting question that I've done a lot of research on
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and made videos about is how does AI music either fit into the already existing music system for paying artists
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and making sure
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that people can also be inspired by what they hear versus where does it actually break
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that system and where do we need new rules.
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Cleo Abram's CERN.
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I went to visit CERN recently.
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I got to see what's called the Large Hadron Collider,
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which is this enormous underground tunnel basically where they have a smaller tube
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that they send protons flying around in opposite directions
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and they speed them up faster and faster and faster
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and then when they're going fast enough they collide them together in these massive detectors
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so that they can better understand what kinds of particles were present close to the big bang
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and how did they relate to each other
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and how might we better understand the universe
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that we live in this is a stretch for me
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because i had to try to understand particle physics and how the heck that would apply to my daily life.
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But it was so, so cool to see this enormous machine.
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That's fine.
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Okay, Cleo Abram podcast.
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Oh, that's so cool.
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I don't have one.
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I didn't realize that this was a big search.
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Maybe now I'll start a podcast.
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I've been thinking about it because I do these long interviews with people,
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some of the most interesting people to me in the world.
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And I end up with like two hours of conversation,
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but then I only use maybe six or seven minutes in my videos because it's a pretty tightly crafted story.
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So I've been thinking about how to make those into a podcast,
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but I haven't quite figured out how to do that yet.
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Cleo Abram, Twitter.
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I mean, I do think Twitter is a really important place for discourse between people who have something to share.
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So whether that's a specific scientific area,
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I know artists that are sort of sharing things back and forth on Twitter.
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I'm a part of some specific communities that help each other do research.
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And so when I have a topic area in mind,
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I will very often go to Twitter and,
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or X, what are we calling it now?
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And search for that topic and DM people who seem to be talking about
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that topic from a scientific perspective and try to better understand it.
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Cleo Abrams' spacesuit.
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I tried on NASA's new spacesuit that they're planning to use to take the next humans to the moon.
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It was awesome.
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And it was really, really heavy.
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They didn't share exactly what the weight was.
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It was maybe 150 pounds, 160 pounds.
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I was actually hanging a little bit from straps on the ceiling to mimic what it would feel like
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if I were actually on the moon.
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I think the request from NASA to a company called Axiom Space,
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which built the actual spacesuits,
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was that they needed to make a suit that could fit,
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I think 90% of the American population,
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which is a big ask.
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And I believe that they succeeded.
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This spacesuit is very, very cool.
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Cleo Abram X-59.
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I went to see a supersonic plane.
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And the thing about supersonic planes is that we used to have them and now we don't.
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So the Concorde was a very famous supersonic plane that used to take people on flights over water.
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And the reason why they could only go over water was supersonic planes are super loud.
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You may have heard of a sonic boom.
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The thing that I didn't fully understand before I began doing research into supersonic planes is
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that a supersonic boom doesn't just happen once.
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It's not a boom when they cross the sound barrier.
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It's a boom that happens the whole time over everywhere they fly over.
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So if there were supersonic planes going back and forth over us right now,
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we would hear sort of a car door slamming a little while away.
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Over and over and over again that can get really annoying
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and so the FAA banned the use of supersonic planes over land and a bunch of other countries did the same,
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which hurt the business of supersonic planes,
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which meant they were only flying over the ocean,
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which meant that eventually the Concorde shut down.
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The X-59 is a new plane that NASA is working on to try
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and see if we can bring back supersonic planes by making them quieter.
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If you look at this plane,
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it's very very long and it's flat on the bottom
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and what they're trying to do is send all of the sound waves up
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so that they go away from people on the ground who might hear them.
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Clio Abram, Apple Vision Pro.
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I made a video about it.
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I think the Apple Vision Pro is an interesting example of the path toward a future
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that I would love to see with VR and AR and the way that those technologies actually feel to you and me.
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What I was most excited about was AR or VR
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or any of these tools as the next step in the
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progression from telegram to telephone to FaceTime to feeling like you're actually in person with someone.
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Cleo Abram, quantum computing.
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I love quantum computers.
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They're so crazy looking and so fascinating.
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When I was doing research on quantum computers,
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I spoke to a quantum physicist who gave me an analogy that I really,
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really love, which is I was thinking about quantum computers as a more powerful computer,
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but that's really not the way to think about it.
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It's not that we're going to have quantum iPhones in the near future.
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It's much more likely that scientists and researchers are going to use quantum computers to explore other areas.
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And the analogy that the physicist gave me was,
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if you think about the progress up until this point of computers as making cars faster and faster,
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he said the better way to think about quantum computers is that they are not faster cars, they're boats.
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And so it allows us,
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hopefully, to explore other different areas.
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And there would be things that a normal computer is good for and things that a quantum computer is good for.
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For example, exploring the quantum physics that is at the core of most of the biological world.
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A quantum computer might be able to really help with that in ways that a normal computer might not.
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Cleo Abram Emmy.
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A show that I was part of on YouTube called Glad You Asked was nominated for Emmy.
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I sat on a computer and looked at the ceremony.
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So this must have been during lockdowns.
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We didn't win.
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Cleo Abram dog.
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My dog is the best.
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His name is Thor.
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He's a 10 pound, probably, Australian shepherd.
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He's the cutest thing to ever exist.
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And I'm just, oh, he's the best.
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That's all the boards.
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Those questions were great.
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A lot of them were about topics that we've covered on the show.
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I love the question about my dog,
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because I could talk to you about him all the time.
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See you next time.
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Why practice speaking with this video?
Engaging with Cleo Abram's interview on technology and science provides an excellent context for English speaking practice. The conversational tone and relatable topics make it easier for learners to focus on both comprehension and expression. By practicing with this video, learners can develop their ability to discuss complex subjects in a clear and engaging way, essential skills not only for everyday conversation but also for exams like the IELTS speaking practice.
In this video, Cleo shares her experiences in a way that makes it accessible for English learners to understand and replicate in their own conversations. By shadowing her speech, learners can catch the nuances of discussing interesting topics with confidence, enriching their vocabulary while making their communication more impactful.
Grammar & Expressions in Context
- Present Simple Tense: Cleo often uses the present simple to describe her routine, e.g., "I make a show called Huge If True." This structure is fundamental for discussing regular activities.
- Infinitive Phrases: She uses infinitives to express purpose, such as "to better understand the context." This construction is valuable for learners aiming to articulate their intents clearly.
- Modals of Ability: Cleo states, "I couldn’t physically shove it over." The use of modals here highlights ability and potential situations, vital for everyday interactions.
- Past Simple Tense: Referring to her experiences, Cleo says, "I went to visit Boston Dynamics." Understanding this tense will help learners narrate past events effectively.
Common Pronunciation Traps
English learners should pay attention to the pronunciation of certain words in Cleo's speech. For example:
- “Humanoid”: The stress is on the second syllable, which can be tricky for non-native speakers.
- “Technology”: This word requires careful attention to the middle syllable to avoid common mistakes.
- “Quantum”: A word that can trip up even native speakers—watch for the subtle “qu” sound followed by a soft “t.”
Practicing these pronunciations through shadow speech techniques allows learners to improve English pronunciation and sound more natural during conversations. Listening closely to Cleo's articulation provides a good model for your own speaking practice.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on | I've been thinking |
| “Used to” used to + verb — a past habit or state that is no longer true | used to have · used to take |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | I've been · I've collaborated · you've ever seen |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | been retired · being used · were inspired |
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.