Airlines are coming off a rough six months of brand perception. Forget about mishandled luggage, the bigger problem is mishandled passengers. Customer service – or lack of it – has given the airline industry a "black eye." Even the most customer-focused airlines are not immune to computer outages and winter storms that cause thousands of flights to be canceled. And because of the negative publicity the industry has received, it is under a microscope.

ABOARD THE USS NIMITZ -- High above the Persian Gulf, an Iranian drone crosses the path of American fighter jets lining up to land on the USS Nimitz. The drone buzzes across the sky more than a mile above the massive aircraft carrier and is spotted by the fighters. But for the senior Navy commanders on the ship, the presence of the enemy drone so close is worrying. Their biggest fear is the surveillance aircraft will start carrying weapons, posing a more direct threat to U.S. vessels transiting one of the world's most significant strategic and economic international waterways. "It's just a matter of time before we see that," said Navy Rear Adm. Bill Byrne, commander of the carrier strike group that includes the Nimitz.

Before autonomous trucks and taxis hit the road, manufacturers will need to solve problems far more complex than collision avoidance and navigation (see "10 Breakthrough Technologies 2017: Self-Driving Trucks"). These vehicles will have to anticipate and defend against a full spectrum of malicious attackers wielding both traditional cyberattacks and a new generation of attacks based on so-called adversarial machine learning (see "AI Fight Club Could Help Save Us from a Future of Super-Smart Cyberattacks"). As consensus grows that autonomous vehicles are just a few years away from being deployed in cities as robotic taxis, and on highways to ease the mind-numbing boredom of long-haul trucking, this risk of attack has been largely missing from the breathless coverage. It reminds me of numerous articles promoting e-mail in the early 1990s, before the newfound world of electronic communications was awash in unwanted spam. Back then, the promise of machine learning was seen as a solution to the world's spam problems. And indeed, today the problem of spam is largely solved--but it took decades for us to get here.

A typical cybersecurity analyst is never short of work, a lot of which can be futile. According to a 2015 Ponemon Institute study, by the end of the year the average security operations center has spent around 20,000 hours just on chasing alerts that prove to be false alarms. Traditional security systems generate a lot of noise that needs to be waded through, which creates even more work. At the same time, a vast pool of security information is published across multiple media in natural languages that can't be quickly processed and leveraged by these systems. Cognitive security, or artificial intelligence, can "understand" natural language, and is a logical and necessary next step to take advantage of this increasingly massive corpus of intelligence that exists.

Drones will have to be registered and users forced to take a safety awareness test under new regulations announced by the UK government. Dozens of near-misses with aircraft around airports have stoked fears over the safety of drone use. Under the rules, owners of drones weighing more than 250g – heavier than many available on the high street – will have to register their details and demonstrate that they understand safety and privacy laws that affect their use. The move follows research that showed strikes by drones of more than 400g could critically damage helicopter windscreens, while a bigger drone of about 2kg could critically harm airliner windscreens at higher speeds. Pilots have been calling for a clampdown after a series of near-collisions between drones and passenger jets, particularly on approach or take-off from major airports, including Heathrow.

When Jason Nichols joined GE Global Research in 2011, soon after completing postdoctoral work in organic chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, he anticipated a long career in chemical research. But after four years creating materials and systems to treat industrial wastewater, Nichols moved to the company's machine-learning lab. This year he began working with augmented reality. Part chemist, part data scientist, Nichols is now exactly the type of hybrid employee crucial to the future of a company working to inject artificial intelligence into its machines and industrial processes. Fifteen years ago, GE's machine operators and technicians monitored its aircraft engines, locomotives, and gas turbines by listening to their clanks and whirs and checking their gauges.

DRONE warfare, once the sole pursuit of the US military, is being democratised. Islamic State (ISIS) has deployed consumer drones carrying grenades in the battle for the Iraqi city of Mosul, creating the most daunting problem US Special Operations Command troops faced in Iraq during 2016, according to their commander Raymond Thomas. Groups around the world are taking advantage of the increasing accessibility of drone technology to build and deploy them as weapons (see "Home-grown drones"). And it's not hard to imagine them being used in an attack in the West; the bomber responsible for the May attack on a concert Leader: "Drone blowback: High-tech weapons come home to roost"

It was billed as one of the most important company-wide meetings in the history of Uber. Yet as staff gathered on Tuesday morning at Uber's headquarters in San Francisco, there was one very conspicuous absence. "Let us address the elephant in the room," said Arianna Huffington, perhaps the most high-profile member of Uber's board. The answer: Travis Kalanick, Uber's 40-year-old co-founder and chief executive, was taking a leave of absence from the taxi-hailing app he has transformed into a global behemoth valued at almost $70bn. Huffington told Uber's staff that the company would not await Kalanick's return, choosing instead to act immediately on the findings of a damning investigation, accepted by the board, into the company's workplace culture amid claims of sexual harassment. "Uber is his life," she said of Kalanick.

A drunk man reportedly ran into an armless K5 robot in the Knightscope parking lot in Mountain View, California and met his match. The April incident occurred after 41-year-old Jason Sylvain tipped over the 300-pound robot. Unfortunately, when the roving security robot found itself off-balance, the K5 called the police and signaled for help. The company spokesman Stacy Dean Stephens said that members of the robot company Knightscope -- which developed the robot that appears similar to the iconic Star Wars Droid R2D2 -- came out and detained Sylvain as the police came. Robo-Cops Are Now A Reality! Silicon Valley Gets KnightScope K5 Patrolling Robot… https://t.co/BiytOrxpPU

Last week, the WannaCry ransomware attack crippled their network -- one report suggested people with life-threatening injuries were told not to come to the hospital. In the future, security systems could use artificial intelligence to monitor user behavior, track activity, suggest when there may be a danger and even mount an attack against the ransomware purveyors, effectively rendering the deadly malware client inoperable. Raja Mukerji, the cofounder and Chief Customer Officer at ExtraHop Networks, equates how an AI can block ransomware to how airport security stops people from using water bottles. A new technique using AI in airport security would not block all water bottles.