Now they look to the sea. Drones capable of underwater operation are little more than novelties at the moment, but the technology could advance marine research, revolutionize undersea cinematography, and let anyone explore places even experienced divers cannot reach. A handful of companies are leading this leap into the water. PowerVision, a Chinese robotics firm with 10 offices around the world, introduced its PowerRay underwater drone earlier this year. OpenROV of Berkeley, California, staged a successful crowdfunding campaign for the Trident, its remotely operated vehicle. These machines offer only limited practicality, but point the way to a future where consumer drones do all sorts of things beneath the waves.

Airbnb wants to mold its hosts into a powerful organizing force, akin to a union, to advocate on its behalf with local governments around the world and to serve as an ideological rebuke to the advances of AI at other tech firms. As part of that effort to increase engagement with hosts, CEO Brian Chesky announced today that he is embarking on a world tour, forming a host advisory board that will provide feedback to the company and sit in on one of its four annual board meetings, and do monthly check-ins with Airbnb users via Facebook Live. "I want to be held accountable to the community," Chesky, who is modifying his title to CEO and head of community, told a group of hosts gathered at Airbnb HQ. "It's incredibly important because when we sit in a room trying to make decisions, we want to make sure we're doing it for the community, not to the community." Chesky will visit London, New York, Cape Town, Delhi, and Beijing to meet with hosts over the next couple of weeks, and hinted that more changes are coming to improve customer service and host experience. Putting hosts front and center is part of Airbnb's business strategy -- after all, the company relies on people to list their homes for rent -- but it also hints at Airbnb's transition into political advocacy.

It works rather like the BB-8 robot from Star Wars, and could change the way we drive. Goodyear has revealed a radical new spherical tire powered by AI and linked to the car by magnetic force so it can rotate on any axis in any direction. The firm says it will be able to sense road conditions and adapt accordingly, turning itself into either a wet or dry weather configuration instantly. Working like human muscles, the smart tire can re-shape the individual sections of the tire's tread design, adding'dimples' for wet conditions (left) or smoothing the tread for dry conditions (right) Made of super-elastic polymer, the tire's bionic skin has a flexibility similar to that of human skin, allowing it to expand and contract. This outer layer covers a foam-like material that is strong enough to remain flexible despite the weight of a vehicle.

LoopMe, a digital advertising firm that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to optimize mobile video advertising, has raised $10 million in a funding round led by Impulse VC and Harbert European Growth Capital, with participation from Holzbrinck Ventures and Open Ocean Capital. Founded out of London in 2012, LoopMe unifies all the popular mobile video ad formats, covering pre-roll, HTML5, and the VAST ad-serving standard. In a nutshell, the platform replaces humans with algorithms that determine the placement of ads in real time, based on metrics such as purchase intent or offline sales. The technology "learns" how viewers are reacting to the ads and changes them based on how a user is responding. The company's platform has been used by a host of well-known brands, including Microsoft, Disney, Airbnb, and Honda.

WikiLeaks has published thousands of documents claiming to reveal top CIA hacking secrets, including the agency's ability to infiltrate encrypted apps like Whatsapp, break into smart TVs and phones and program self-driving cars. WikiLeaks said the files released on Tuesday - mysteriously dubbed ' Vault 7' - are the most comprehensive release of U.S. spying files ever made public. The leak purportedly includes 8,761 documents and files from an isolated, high-security network situated inside the CIA's Center for Cyber Intelligence in Langley, Virgina. It details intelligence information on CIA-developed software intended to hack iPhones, Android phones, smart TVs and Microsoft, Mac and Linux operating systems. WikiLeaks alleges that some of the remote hacking programs can turn these electronic devices into recording and transmitting stations to spy on their targets.

We spoke to The Daily Beast to help make sense of ISIL's growing use of armed consumer drones in the conflict in Syria and Iraq. Meanwhile, we assisted The Verge in confirming that the jail sentence given to a Seattle man for crashing his drone during a parade was in fact unprecedented in the history of U.S. domestic drone use. A suspected U.S. drone strike in Pakistan killed two individuals near the border of Afghanistan. If confirmed, it would be the first U.S. drone strike in Pakistan under the Trump administration. The U.S. launched over 20 airstrikes in Yemen, targeting al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula.

A quick, hassle-free way to stay on top of robotics news, our robotics digest is released on the first Monday of every month. Sign up to get it in your inbox. February is only just gone, and already 2017 is shaping up to be a year full of big ideas and ambitions. The Future of Life Institute, for example, just published the Asilomar AI principles: 23 guidelines to ensure AI developments are beneficial to humanity. They are calling for shared responsibility and caution against an AI arms race.

A trio of university students is giving Indian startups unprecedented access to Silicon Valley. In April 2016, 20-year-old Abhinav Kukreja and two of his fellow freshman students at the University of California, Berkeley, Anish Prabhu, and Aryaman Dalmia, created an incubator called Moonshot that connects Indian startups with experts, funds, and talent from Silicon Valley. Its four-month program gives companies access to over 20 mentors in India and California, exposes them to various venture capitalists and angel investors, and provides interns. The first batch of startups Moonshot incubated last year included student benefits platform Frapp, marketplace ListUP, small-business cash-flow management startup Numberz, home appliance automation company Hombot, online B2B billing solutions portal Pumpcharge, and real estate and rental management service Azuro. For their second round in January 2017, Moonshot zeroed in on startups "advancing science and technology, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and companies that have a positive social impact," Kukreja, a computer science and statistics major, said.

Peter Shulman, an associate history professor at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, was lecturing on the reemergence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s when a student asked an odd question: Was President Warren Harding a member of the KKK? He confessed that he was not aware of that allegation, but that Harding had been in favor of anti-lynching legislation, so it seemed unlikely. But then a second student pulled out his phone and announced that yes, Harding had been a Klan member, and so had four other presidents. For most of its history, Google did not answer questions. Users typed in what they were looking for and got a list of web pages that might contain the desired information.

This week's milestones in the history of technology include the invention of the telephone, automating telephone exchanges and textile weaving, and the idea of searching for information through associative links. The first-ever nationally televised awards ceremony devoted to the Internet is broadcast. U.S. patent 174,465 for "Improvement in telegraphy" is issued to 29-year-old Alexander Graham Bell. This was the patent for his invention of the telephone, covering "the method of, and apparatus for, transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically ... by causing electrical undulations, similar in form to the vibrations of the air accompanying the said vocal or other sound." E-book publisher Rosetta Books wins the lawsuit brought against it by Random House for acquiring titles directly from authors.