Hello World

This episode of "Hello World" offers a window into just how good New Zealand technology has become. Ashlee Vance covers the country's North Island, stretching from Auckland to the southern port and capital of Wellington - the home of Peter Jackson's movie making empire and an incredible hotbed of effects artistry.

Hold on to your H&M cardigans! The world's funkiest tech and travel show hits Sweden. Tune in as host, Ashlee Vance, travels from Stockholm to Luleå, discovering how the Swedes got so good at making the things the whole world loves. His journey includes: a conversation with a face-swapping robot, fika with Spotify's Daniel Ek, and a look at how efficient energy is reimagining data centers and turbine power.

Unit 8200 is an elite branch of the Israel Defense Forces, or IDF, that specializes in computer security and murkier, more controversial stuff, such as espionage and cyber attacks. The Unit resembles the National Security Agency (NSA) in the U.S. So it’s not that surprising that Unit 8200 and the IDF would give rise to clever, interesting tech startups. What’s remarkable is how Israel has turned its soldiers into entrepreneurs. Today, Israel has about 5,500 startups, and it added 1,400 new ones just last year. It has become a world leader not just in security but in chip, printing, biotech, and corporate software, as well. In this episode of Hello World Bloomberg Businessweek’s Ashlee Vance goes to Israel to discover how the IDF became such an efficient technology engine.

Necessity is the mother of invention. And when you live in a country that's trying to kill you, you have to be very creative. Generations of Icelanders, locked inside for months to escape the cruel winter, have unleashed their creativity in many ways to survive. On this episode of Hello World, Ashlee Vance encounters Iceland's cold, hard, almost unlivable terrain and the vikings and space nerds who have conquered this land through their unyielding will and ingenuity.

Ashlee Vance camps out in the Mojave Desert, where inventors have created a playground to push custom cars and spaceships to their limits.

On this episode of Hello World, Ashlee Vance visits his ancestral homeland of Australia, where polyamorous biohackers, Internet playboys, underwater drones and giant robotic dinosaurs are reigniting a long-dormant tech industry.

In this episode of Hello World, Bloomberg’s Ashlee Vance heads to England to find out how the country is fighting to inject new life into its technology industry. The trip starts out in Bletchley Park. From there, it’s off to Cambridge, the heart of England’s technology scene. Vance hangs out with learned cows and artificial intelligence whizzes, bikes past Newton’s famed apple tree (at least a reasonable replica of it), and goes punting with the inventor of the Raspberry Pi computer. From Cambridge, it’s off to the Cotswolds and the headquarters of Dyson to see its latest creations. And then on to London to check out some startups and whine about Brexit while drinking the world’s most exotic cocktails at the Langham Hotel.

On this episode of Hello World, Bloomberg Businessweek’s Ashlee Vance heads to Japan to find people who are trying to wake the country up from its technological slumber. His journey goes from Tokyo to Kyoto and Osaka. Along the way, he meets with Japan’s top roboticists making lifelike androids. He heads to Hitachi’s vaunted research labs to see the machines – robot helpers and autonomous vehicles - that the company thinks will take care of Japan’s senior citizens in the years to come. And he hangs out with a host of eccentric characters from robotics hobbyists to the world’s most prolific inventor–an 88-year-old man who claims to have invented both the floppy disk and the most stimulating sex potion known to man.

For the past five years, Russia’s been building walls around its web and packing it with tech oligarchs, startup cities, face-finding algorithms, hacker hunters and, of course, a few bears. In this episode of Bloomberg's Hello World, Ashlee Vance travels to Mother Russia to see how they do tech. Only a few countries have built their own version of the internet and Russia's is unique.

Chile may not jump right to mind as a technology hub. But it turns out that Chile is home to some of the world’s largest and most extraordinary technology projects, stretching from Santiago to the Atacama Desert. Hello World’s host Ashlee Vance traveled to Chile for two weeks to explore the country’s tech scene.

Relativity Space and its two founders - Tim and Jordan - have a plan to make rockets faster and cheaper than anyone else. To do this, they're looking to build every part of a rocket - its engine, its fuel tanks and its body - with giant 3D printers. In this Hello World short, Bloomberg Businessweek's Ashlee Vance goes to check out Relativity.

Start-up Thor wants to beat Tesla to the market with electric semi-trucks. Thor's custom models are due in 2019 and meant for short hauls.

Intelligent, indestructible and with no humans on board, these sailboats are plotting their own course through the waters of San Francisco Bay. If Richard Jenkins gets his way, soon there’ll be hundreds of them – trawling the oceans for data.

There's an AI revolution sweeping across the world. Yet few people know the real story about where this technology came from and why it suddenly took off. In this ground-breaking episode of "Hello World," the story of AI's rise is told in detail for the first time, as journalist Ashlee Vance heads to the unexpected birthplace of the technology, Canada.

Journalist Ashlee Vance travels to Montreal, Canada to meet the founders of Lyrebird, a startup that is using AI to clone human voices with frightening precision.

The University of Alberta has a lot going for it. It’s pretty. And it’s home to many an eccentric and clever inventor, like Kory Mathewson. Kory is an A.I researcher who comes with a side-kick, a robot that does improv comedy. In this Hello World video, Bloomberg Businessweek's Ashlee Vance goes in search of the humorous side of artificial intelligence.

Conventional wisdom today says that robots will put millions of factory workers out of jobs. In this Hello World segment, journalist Ashlee Vance visits the Toronto headquarters of startup Kindred AI to learn about the cutting-edge technology behind our robot replacements from Kindred AI's refreshingly human co-founders, Suzanne Gilbert and George Babu.

For nearly 40 years, Geoff Hinton has been trying to get computers to learn like people do, a quest almost everyone thought was crazy or at least hopeless - right up until the moment it revolutionized the field. In this Hello World video, Bloomberg Businessweek's Ashlee Vance meets the Godfather of AI.

Zoox is on the verge of transforming the entire transportation industry by creating self-driving robots that will become the ride-shares of the future.

Alexander Weygers, a Renaissance man in the mold of the tech industry’s stated ideal, inspired an art dealer to become an acolyte. In this Hello World short, Ashlee Vance visits the dealer whose curiosity about Weygers has evolved into an obsession.

Over the past 40 years, the fishing village of Shenzhen has been reborn as a futuristic metropolis bursting with factories. Bloomberg Businessweek's Ashlee Vance travels to the heart of China's tech revolution to witness this new reality firsthand, as part of a three-episode exploration of the city. In part one of Hello World Shenzhen, Vance gets a worker's view of life in a startup and then explores one of the city's famous electronics markets to learn how people survive (and in some cases make fortunes) in such a frenetic, competitive environment.

For two weeks each year, college students take over a massive stadium and fill it with fighting drones, plastic ammo, and rapt spectators. This is Robomasters, held in Shenzhen by DJI, the world's leading drone maker. In part two of Hello World Shenzhen, Bloomberg Businessweek’s Ashlee Vance goes inside the world of Nerf-style robo-warfare to spotlight the kinds of innovation that have kept DJI, at the forefront of a booming market, and demonstrates why you may not want him on your squad.

In part three of Hello World Shenzhen, Bloomberg Businessweek’s Ashlee Vance heads out into a city where you can't use cash or credit cards, only your smartphone, where AI facial-recognition software instantly spots and tickets jaywalkers, and where at least one factory barely needs people. This is the society that China's government and leading tech companies are racing to make a reality, with little time to question which advancements are net positives for the rest of us.

After 11 years of development, the Arcimoto has finally arrived. It's a three-wheeled, all-electric vehicle that is small, fast and incredibly fun to drive. The grand vision behind the Arcimoto is that people will use it for most of their day-to-day driving instead of relying on their bulky, gas guzzling cars. But, the jury is very much out on whether or not consumers will pay $12,000 a pop to back this societal and environmental experiment. On this episode of Hello World, reporter Ashlee Vance heads to the Arcimoto's birthplace in Eugene, Oregon to take the vehicle out for a spin and to hear the saga of its creation.