Patrol ships are necessary to protect coastlines and fleets, but they're far from ideal right now. You need big, bulky vessels, and the human crews are either faced with the tedium of an uneventful trip (if they're lucky) or threats that a lone ship is ill-equipped to face. Rolls-Royce might have a better way: it just unveiled plans for an autonomous patrol ship that would eliminate many of these headaches, and would even be relatively eco-friendly. The ship will use a combination of artificial intelligence and sensors to get around instead of a crew, with modular systems letting it change roles between missions (for example, a drone launching pad). This should not only let it operate for long stretches (up to 100 days) without subjecting humans to risk or sheer boredom, but allows for a smaller design that's cheaper to run.

A majority of people are skeptical of the government adopting artificial intelligence tools to manage its citizen services, but more men than women say they are comfortable with the technological shift, according to a new survey. In a report published by Accenture, one-third of men said they trusted AI to manage their health care, while only 20 percent of women felt the same way. Though the gender gap was widest for health care, researchers found that in six different categories of citizen services, men trusted A.I. technology more than women did. The online survey was conducted by McGuire Research Services in January 2017 and included 500 people living in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. Though agencies have already begun delegating some of their repetitive tasks to artificial intelligence, the overall results show a sizable portion of the public distrusts the use of such tools in government services that directly involve citizens. Both genders felt roughly the same about using AI to register to vote, with 46 percent of men and 45 percent of women saying they trusted such government tools.

If you imagined the skies of California would someday be buzzing with drones carrying tiny vials of pot or edibles for recreational marijuana users, think again because that stoner fantasy was just a pipe dream. California's Bureau of Cannabis Control last week outlined its plans to ban pot delivery by drone, putting the kibosh on any business hoping to make a buck on the concept. On Wednesday, the bureau released an initial study describing proposed emergency regulations for commercial cannabis businesses ahead of Jan. 1, when marijuana sales, with proper retail licensing, will be allowed for recreational use in California. In its study -- Commercial Cannabis Business Licensing Program Regulations -- the bureau is clear: Marijuana must be transported in trailers or commercial vehicles. If the message was lost, the bureau goes a bit further: "Transportation may not be done by aircraft, watercraft, rail, drones, human-powered vehicles or unmanned vehicles."

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has made its final determinations on the cause of the fatal Tesla Model S crash that took place in Florida in May of last year. In a report set to be released in the next few days, the NTSB concludes that the accident was the fault of both drivers and has issued a series of recommendations to the Department of Transportation (DOT), the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), manufacturers of Level 2 automated driving systems, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers and Global Automakers. The report's findings state that while the driver of the truck failed to yield the right of way to the Tesla driver, the latter was too heavily reliant on the car's automated system, which is the likely reason he did not try to avoid the oncoming collision. Data from the Autopilot system show that the Tesla driver's use pattern reflects a lack of understanding regarding the system's limitations -- which the NTSB says need to be configured to restrict themselves in order to prevent misuse. The Tesla Autopilot system monitored the driver's attention through his interaction with the steering wheel, which previous findings have determined was incredibly limited.

The chairman of the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said on Tuesday that "operational limitations" in the Tesla Model S played a "major role" in a May 2016 crash that killed a driver using the vehicle's semi-autonomous Autopilot system. The limits on the autonomous driving system include factors such as Tesla being unable to ensure driver attention even when the car is traveling at high speeds, ensuring Autopilot is used only on certain roads and monitoring driver engagement, NTSB said. The NTSB recommended auto safety regulators and automakers take steps to ensure that semi-autonomous systems are not misused. "System safeguards were lacking," NTSB chairman Robert Sumwalt said. "Tesla allowed the driver to use the system outside of the environment for which it was designed and the system gave far too much leeway to the driver to divert his attention."

An investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has determined that "operational limitations" of Tesla's Autopilot system played a "major role" in a fatal crash last May, but that the driver was also at fault for not paying adequate attention to the road. Tesla owner Joshua Brown was using the semi-autonomous system on a Florida highway when both he and the car failed to notice a tractor-trailer turning left across the road. At the time, Autopilot was capable of steering the car within its lane and autonomously braking for vehicles in the road ahead. Following the incident, Tesla said that the vehicles sensors were unable to identify the white truck against the bright sky behind it. According to Reuters, the NTSB found that the system worked as designed, but should've done more to ensure driver attentiveness and restrict its use to highways and limited-access roads.

The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has found that Tesla's Autopilot system was partly to blame for a fatal accident in which a Model S collided with a lorry. Federal investigators say Tesla "lacked understanding" of the semi-autonomous Autopilot's limitations. The NTSB recommended that car manufacturers and regulators take steps to ensure such systems are not misused. It said the collision should never have happened. The crash, in May 2016, led to the death of Tesla driver Joshua Brown, 40.

Last year, two data scientists from security firm ZeroFOX conducted an experiment to see who was better at getting Twitter users to click on malicious links, humans or an artificial intelligence. The researchers taught an AI to study the behavior of social network users, and then design and implement its own phishing bait. In tests, the artificial hacker was substantially better than its human competitors, composing and distributing more phishing tweets than humans, and with a substantially better conversion rate. The AI, named SNAP_R, sent simulated spear-phishing tweets to over 800 users at a rate of 6.75 tweets per minute, luring 275 victims. By contrast, Forbes staff writer Thomas Fox-Brewster, who participated in the experiment, was only able to pump out 1.075 tweets a minute, making just 129 attempts and luring in just 49 users.

The UAE investments in artificial intelligence (AI) has seen significant growth in the last three years and now analysts predict that it will reach $9bn by the end of 2017. WAM reported that Abdullah Alfan Al Shamsi, assistant Under-Secretary for Industrial Affairs, Ministry of Economy, said official statistics purporting that scientific research contributions to the country's GDP reached 0.87%. "The UAE has been among the first countries to realise the central importance of artificial intelligence to build a knowledge-based economy that adopts scientific research and high-end technology as among the key enabler of the UAE Vision 2021," he added. With AI investments to reach $9bn, Al Shamsi noted that the emerging technology will enhance competitiveness across all economic platforms, particularly industrialisation. Additionally AI will continue to emerge in government services, consumer services and work environments.

"The Tesla's automation did not detect, nor was it required [to], nor was it designed to detect the crossing vehicle," Robert L. Sumwalt, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said at the start of a hearing reviewing the Florida crash. Tests by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration determined that Tesla and other vehicles with semiautonomous driving technology had great difficulty sensing cross traffic. The NTSB staff also said that Tesla's reliance on sensing a driver's hands on the wheel was not an effective way of monitoring whether the driver was paying attention. The NTSB staff recommended the use of a more effective technology to determine whether a driver is paying attention, such as a camera tracking the driver's eyes.