At the end of my Melbourne street there's a new system being installed for traffic management. I hadn't even noticed the extra cameras, vehicle and pedestrian sensors, LiDAR and radar on the intersection, but these tools are all part of a larger system, with researchers hoping that a 2.5km section of Nicholson Street, in Carlton, will eventually be run by an artificial intelligence (AI). This might sound a little nerve-wracking to the average commuter, but these "smart corridors" are popping up around the world – systems that promise to provide us with less traffic and better safety. "Many cities around the world have dedicated corridors or smart motorways that are equipped with sensors, CCTV cameras and AI for predicting the traffic flow, speed, or occupancy at a specific moment in time," says Dr Adriana-Simona Mihaita, an AI infrastructure researcher at the University of Technology Sydney, who was not involved in the research. "Accurate predictions will provide transport operators with the means to make informed decisions and apply new control plans, or adjust the current ones according to ongoing traffic or eventual disruptions."

During the meeting, a presentation was made featuring the City Brain system for developing the public transport network planning, which RTA intends to implement this year in cooperation with Alibaba. The system, which is meant for managing urban traffic systems, uses AI and advanced algorithm to analyse a massive number of big data captured from nol cards, buses and taxis in operation as well as the Enterprise Command and Control Centre. Then it converts the data into information useful in sending instant notifications about the revised bus schedules and routes. The system is expected to improve the bus ridership by 17 per cent, reduce the average waiting time by 10 per cent, and shorten the journey time and the average bus use by five per cent.

As thousands of Washington, D.C. drivers headed to Arlington National Cemetery for the Armistice Day ceremony, they found themselves stuck in the world's first traffic jam. On November 11, 1921, the congestion trapped motorists in their cars for hours--along with one very displeased President Harding, whose limousine had been caught up in the middle of it all. People were frustrated, tired, and unaware that they were making history. Just 100 years later, urban traffic chaos persists. But AI traffic management systems may offer a new solution to this century-old problem, while at the same time addressing the sustainability challenges of the future.

By any criteria, 5G is a significant advance on the previous 4G standards. The first 5G networks already offer download speeds of up to 600 megabits per second and have the potential to get significantly faster. By contrast, 4G generally operates at up to 28 Mbits/s--and most mobile-phone users will have experienced that rate grinding to zero from time to time, for reasons that aren't always clear.

In the time it takes some countries to slightly extend one train station platform, China can rustle up entire high-speed railways. And this stunning drone footage shows what incredible feats of engineering they can be. The clip shows 160mph trains running along the now completed 411-mile Xi'an to Chengdu high-speed line, which was started in October 2012. The clip shows 160mph trains running along the now completed 411-mile Xi'an to Chengdu high-speed line, which was started in October 2012 To connect Xi'an with Chengdu engineers had to tackle the fearsome Qinling Mountains that divide northern and southern China It's something to behold, with the £8billion (71bn yuan) line – finished in December 2017 - passing amid towering mountains and through huge tunnels. To connect the two cities engineers had to tackle the fearsome Qinling Mountains that divide northern and southern China and thread the track underneath numerous environmentally sensitive areas.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society. For more than a decade, many people were perfectly happy to hand their data over to any company that promised to connect them to friends or tell them what Friends character they most resembled. But in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, many tech companies are now keen to reassure users that they are not in it for their information. In an interview with Recode and MSNBC, Apple CEO Tim Cook criticized Facebook for its business model, bragging that Apple gets by on its products, not customer data. Now the executive at a leading self-driving car company is trying to assure consumers that it isn't interested in their delicious, delicious data.

Self-driving cars will change how we live, in all sorts of ways. But they won't just affect us humans – the coming revolution in autonomous transport has significant implications for wildlife as well. Nature conservationists and planners need to think hard about the impact of driverless vehicles, most notably in terms of renewed urban sprawl. Driverless cars could mean more people will commute from further afield, researchers say - and could be bad news for green areas. Warn the technology could spark a huge rise in urbanisation, and city planners must be aware of the issues.