From fears about work and privacy to a rivalry between the U.S. and China, the series explores the promise and perils of AI. It traces a new industrial revolution that will reshape and disrupt our lives, our jobs and our world, and allow the emergence of the surveillance society.
Today, China leads the world in e-commerce and is a society that bypassed credit cards. Now shops in stores are without cashiers, where the currency is facial recognition. No country has ever moved that fast. And in a short two-and-a-half years, China's A.I. implementation really went from minimal amount to probably about 17 or 18 unicorns, that is, billion-dollar companies. The progress was powered by a new generation of ambitious young techs pouring out of Chinese universities, competing with each other for new ideas, and financed by a new cadre of Chinese venture capitalists.

Ewan, Charley, and the team land in Ushuaia, the southernmost tip of South America, but tensions arise due to snow and mechanical issues. Traveling 13000 miles over 100 days on electric bikes is hard to imagine. Ewan McGregor and Charles Boorman find out how challenging their mission is as they embark on a journey on prototype Harley Davidsons and the Rivian trucks. The first obstacle is electricity. While parts of the city have no problems with charging the bikes and the trucks, the countryside is where the duo face issues.

Presenter Michael Wood seeks out the achievements of the country’s golden age, discovering how India discovered zero, calculated the circumference of the Earth and wrote the world’s first sex guide, the Kama Sutra. In the south, he visits the giant temple of Tanjore and sees traditional bronze casters, working as their ancestors did 1,000 years ago.

Widespread immigration to the U.S. from Latin countries begins – first with a small group from Cuba, then a larger one from Mexico. Both flee chaos and violence in their home country and are attracted by opportunities in the United States. In 1898, the U.S. helps liberate Cuba and Puerto Rico from Spain but then seizes Puerto Rico as its colony. The first Puerto Rican arrivals (now U.S. citizens) establish a network in New York.

Graham-Dixon reveals how the north of the country has produced some of the most dazzling and iconic art of the modern age. Spain's turbulent history has shaped artists from Francisco Goya to Pablo Picasso. Graham-Dixon argues that Spanish architecture is the art form now taking the nation forward in the new millennium.

The series concludes by delving into the world of satirical maps. How did maps take on a new form, not as geographical tools, but as devices for humour, satire or storytelling? Graphic Artist Fred Rose perfectly captured the public mood in 1880 with his General Election maps featuring Gladstone and Disraeli, using the maps to comment upon crucial election issues still familiar to us today. Technology was on the satirist's side with the advent of high-speed printing allowing for larger runs at lower cost. In 1877, when Rose produced his 'Serio Comic Map of Europe at War', maps began to take on a new direction and form, reflecting a changing world. Rose's map exploited these possibilities to the full using a combination of creatures and human figures to represent each European nation. The personification of Russia as a grotesque-looking octopus, extending its tentacles around the surrounding nations, perfectly symbolised the threat the country posed to its neighbours.