An ariel drone, acting on orders, is strafing some gangers ground targets when one of the gangers points a shotgun at it. But its programming is not sufficient to tell the difference between a ganger pointing a shotgun at it and a ganger not pointing a shotgun at it. Does it get any defense dice when the ganger shoots at it or is it unaware?

If I shoot a panther cannon at an advancing, summoned Earth elemental what are the odds it even knows what a panther cannon does? If its unaware that having a panther cannon pointed at it is a bad thing then how can it avoid the attack?

A high, explosive grenade is thrown at a toxic water spirit. The spirit has no clue what a grenade is. DOes it float right over the grenade, blissfully unaware of the coming explosion? What about the second grenade? Does it learn its lesson from the first one?

A mage casts a lightning bolt at a drone. The lightning bolt has no mass and limited heat. Can the drone ascertain from visible information alone that the bolt of light coming at it is dangerous? Even if it can determine that lightning bolts are bad for it, wouldn't get a massive defensive penalty as it can't pick on the visual clues that the magician is about to cast a spell like a living runner can?

A drone has all those things preprogrammed either into it's own program (considering the cost between a reular OS and a Pilot OS) OR assume that the Defense autosoft has threat recognition algorithms and a FOF recognition system.

With the cost of pilot programs being pretty steep I'd say that they are not dumb, not by a long shot because otherwise no-one would have remote controlled drones because it would be cheaper to hire people instead of buying expensive drones just to have them being shot down because the OS is stupid.

For drones, make a Pilot + Response roll to determine whether the drones "common sense" figures out what's going on. That's on page 214 of your hymnal.

Spirits are creatures of the metaplanes that may or may not have had contact with the material world. My ruling would be to have the spirit make a Force + Force (3) roll. I derived this from two sources. I figure that the roll would either be a Judge Intentions roll (to notice that the target is acting like he's pointing a weapon) or a Memory roll (for the spirit to remember its last visit, or to remember something its spirit buddies mentioned once); either roll is made up of two mental attributes, and has the same rating as the spirit's Force. The threshhold is derived directly from the Object Resistance Table (for the Panther Assault Cannon in this case; I'd make it 2 for things like swords and bows).

I could also accept a roll of Logic + Modern Weaponry Knowledge (1) to recognise the gun. Since the spirit doesn't have the knowledge skill, it would roll (Force - 1) as a default.

In either case, if the defender is unaware of an attack, that defender gets no defense roll. This does not apply to a defender already in combat. (Boyle et al. 150)

I'd be inclined to rule that the defense autosoft has threat recognition capacity, so the drone would recognise the difference between the ganger with shotgun and the ganger without shotgun. I'd also suggest that spirits are aware of another beings aura (being magical and all) so would be able to determine that Panther Cannon wielding opponent intended it harm.

I voted that the defender must recongise that it is being attacked, but in most situations it is moot as, unless surprised (which there are already rules for) even a drone or a spirit would recognise a threat. If a player came up with a particularly cunning way to indirectly attack an opponent then a dice pool modifier to the unfortunate target could easily take away all it's defense dice.

You example of a toxic water spirit and the grenade is a good one. If said grenade had a long fuse the spirit would have no incentive to keep its distance and it could easily be caught in the blast.

Everything unknown in combat should be presumed dangerous and therefore acted on accordingly.

As soon as bullets start flying, SOP for a person (or a drone) would be to keep a low profile, move erratically, and do everything they (it) could to make themselves harder to hit. This is what dodge/defense rolls represent, not the ability to go into 'bullet-time', and this doesn't usually require awareness of a specific opponent as long as you know that you're in a dangerous situation. Pilot programs should have that much automatically programmed into them. Spirits might vary depending on their experience with humanity.

For drones, isn't this what the Defense autosoft is all about?

You don't dodge bullets. You take cover (or evasive action) in advance, and hope you don't get hit. A "full dodge" action just means you're devoting more time to the evasive action than to other things (like shooting back).

At most ranges, once the bullet is in the air your ability to make a course change that will take you out of it's way is pretty much nil.

I didn't vote, the questions are too specific for the answers.