A new fertility technique allows doctors to replace defective DNA found within a mother's egg with the DNA from another female donor. The result is a baby born with the DNA of two mothers. The first three-parent baby may potentially be born around Christmas of 2017. A new fertility technique allows doctors to replace defective DNA found within a mother's egg with the DNA Scientists will discover the truth behind "dark matter" Dark matter, a mysterious type of matter that makes up a little more than a quarter of the universe, is several experiments away from being detected. Dr. Katherine Freese, an expert in the field of dark matter, says 2017 may be the year "the 80-year-old dark matter puzzle will finally be solved."

Artificial intelligence research should be done publicly and for the public good, according to Alphabet Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, who admitted to not initially recognizing the importance of AI. In a speech here at RSA, Schmidt argued that AI research "should be done in the open," lest the work encourage paranoia and suspicion between countries. "The research should be done for the benefit of the many, not the few, and should apply to every human," he said. Diversity of though is also important, he stressed. "More people looking at it means a better outcome," he said.

Spanish lender Banco Santander SA has invested in two artificial-intelligence companies, part of the financial industry's increased focus on technology smart enough to mimic human thinking, sources familiar with the deals told Reuters. The bank's venture arm, Santander InnoVentures, bought stakes in Personetics Technologies, which provides automated customer service, and Gridspace, whose software can learn and interpret language the way a person would, the sources said. The size of the investments could not be determined and the sources asked not to be named because they were not allowed to disclose the information publicly. The deals underscore how lenders have become more interested in using artificial intelligence for a wide variety of tasks, including hiring, spotting fraud, improving call centers and recommending products for customers. Personetics, which has offices in New York, London and Tel Aviv, creates "chatbots" that can respond to customer questions through popular messaging platforms like Facebook's (fb) Messenger.

Yes, after pulling herself out of her 1950's rut as a swimsuit model to become everything from a doctor, lawyer, computer scientist, astronaut and even the president of the United States, Barbie has now become a 3D-animated hologram that can serve up the weather on command. As first reported in Wired, The Hello Barbie Hologram debuted at the New York Toy Fair this week. And like the original Hello Barbie doll, her laser-beamed character combines motion-capture animation with peppy, Amazon Echo-like answers to your child's questions. Want to remind your child to brush their teeth? Hello Barbie Hologram does that, too.

Non-lethal weapons manufacturer Taser, also one of the leading body camera developers, announced last week that they are forming an artificial intelligence division within the company. Taser acquired two companies focused on artificial intelligence, Dextro and Misfit, hoping to create powerful surveillance tools that will allow police officers to scan people and objects both in real-time and retroactively. The company hopes to make it easier for law enforcement to scan hours of footage using keywords to zoom in on relevant images, such as searching for a gun or a specific car. Taser claims, however, that the software will not have facial-recognition capabilities just yet, but will simply detect faces for the purpose of redacting them from videos. "To clarify, Dextro's system offers computer vision techniques to identify faces and other objects for improving the efficiency of the redaction workflow. AI enables you to become more targeted when needed," Taser vice president of communications Steve Tuttle, told Vocativ.

Technology may be advancing rapidly when it comes to autonomous vehicles, but humans still make the cut. At least that's the finding of a new report about safety challenges that highlights the importance of driver behavior. While autonomous vehicles have the potential for tremendous safety benefits, they will be sharing the road with traditional driver-operated cars for many decades, "perhaps forever," according to "Autonomous Vehicles Meet Human Drivers: Traffic Safety Issues for States" released earlier this month by the Governors Highway Safety Association, a nonprofit organization representing state highway safety offices. "The research and media attention given to autonomous vehicles often overlooks the safety implications that a mix of driver-operated and autonomous vehicles will bring, " Dr. James Hedlund, a former senior official with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and author of the report, said in a statement. "Unfortunately, ignoring the driver side of the equation may negate many of the expected safety benefits," he added.

Staying up to date with rapidly evolving technologies in the ecommerce and marketing industries can be a daunting task. With a slew of new technologies out there, it is also not easy to pinpoint which ones are worth the venture. We analyzed the top 3 most successful technologies impacting the ecommerce industry today. In 2016, total retail sales across the globe reached a whopping $22.049 trillion estimation, up 6 percent from the previous year, according to eMarketer forecasts. EMarketer also predicts that sales will top $27 trillion in 2020, despite annual growth rates slowing over the next few years.

A fresh scrape from Glassdoor gives us a good idea about what applicants are asked during a data scientist interview at some of the top companies. Unfortunately for us, almost every company has their interviewees sign NDAs. Since Glassdoor allows anonymity, a few brave souls have given us some fantastic examples of what they were asked during the interview process at top companies like Facebook, Google, and Microsoft. If you find yourself unable to answer some of the questions below, consider checking out a course or a book on the subject. If you'd like to share your answer(s) to any of the questions, leave a comment and I'll add the top ones to the post.

I was sharing my latest Algorithmic Rotoscope image on Facebook and a friend asked me what I meant by training a machine learning model. When you get too close to the fire, you lose your words sometimes. It is why I try to step away and write stories about it -- it helps me find my words and learn to use them in new and interesting ways. Thankfully, I have a partner in crime who understands this stuff and knows how to use her words. I use my blog as a reference for my ideas and thoughts, and I didn't want to lose this one. I'm playing with machine learning so that I can better understand what it does and what it doesn't do.

Did you ever think you'd live in a world where the foxiest job title was "Data Scientist," people who build "models" all day? Well, Weird Science has come to pass. This is our new and very exciting reality. Knowledge and experiences are wrapped together for a new set of challenges, from data scientist to developer to marketers. Last year's news that Google was using a new machine learning tool called RankBrain -- used to contribute to its search engine results -- caused a kerfuffle in the SEO world, leaving us wondering just what kind of impact it would have.