Science sleuths think they found Leonardo da Vinci's DNA Advances in genetics might help us see what set the Renaissance man apart. The painting hangs in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Scientists are one step closer to pinpointing fragments of Leonardo da Vinci's elusive DNA . A team of researchers from the Leonardo da Vinci DNA Project analyzed samples swabbed from a red chalk drawing possibly attributed to the famed polymath, as well as letters written by one of his known cousins.

The Mona Lisa is small. Less than three feet tall and about two feet wide, it hangs tiny in the biggest exhibition room at France's Louvre Museum. And in the past two or so weeks, some vigilante AI artists have decided that it should be bigger--much bigger. They're making that happen using a beta tool in Adobe Photoshop called "generative fill." It launched late last month and allows users to fill in, augment, or expand an image using AI--think ChatGPT but for Photoshop.

AI images have shocked the photography world with their hyper-realistic output. But there is seemingly one thing they keep stumbling over -- hands. AI image generators such as DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion are notorious for adding one too many fingers or morphing digits together, making them look nightmarish. Midjourney is getting crazy powerful--none of these are real photos, and none of the people in them exist. Earlier this year, PetaPixel reported on realistic party pictures generated by AI.

As is well known, the number of robots will increase during the next ten years. The Boston Consulting Group expects that by 2025, robots will perform 25% of all labor-intensive tasks. This is due to cost-related and performance-related enhancements. The United States, Canada, Japan, South Korea, and the United Kingdom will push robot adoption. The four leading industries are computer and electronic products, electrical equipment and appliances, transportation equipment, and machinery.

Have you worried that AI would automate away graphic design jobs? Instead of worrying, let's stay present and examine the latest results of graphic designs created by AI. The results mentioned below are from research papers published in top-tier computer science conferences or journals. In 2018, an artwork created by AI was sold in an auction at $432,500. By contrast, an unsung hero: an AI design system called Luban developed by Alibaba (an e-commerce giant), already delivered billions of banners/posters for customers! Recently, researchers proposed a new AI design system called Vinci[1].

Around the time Leonardo Da Vinci was painting the Mona Lisa, he was also writing his Codex on the Flight of Birds, a roughly 35,000-word exploration of the ways in which man might take to the air. His illustrations included diagrams positing pre-Newtonian theories of physics, a rudimentary plan for a flying machine and many, many sketches of birds in flight. The Mona Lisa, with her secretive smile, is a universe of intimacy captured on a relatively small panel of wood. But the landscape behind his captivating subject shows the world as you would see it from atop a tall hill--or from the vantage point you would get if you had hitched a ride on the back of a giant bird. Even as da Vinci was perfecting one way of seeing a face, he was dreaming of other ways of looking.

Vinci believes in a future where your headphones are the central hub of your connected world. Over the last two years Vinci has been testing and perfecting a smart, wireless headphone that is controlled by your voice and powered by cloud technology, with no connection needed to your mobile phone. Wire-free and phone-free, Vinci is perfect for joggers, travelers and all music lovers. Vinci allows you to voice control your music when manually choosing songs on your phone is inconvenient. No matter what you're doing - walking, running, or commuting - you can tell Vinci exactly what song or artist you want to listen to, say a specific genre or mood, or let Vinci pick a song for you.

Italian conductor Andrea Colombini said of his student, "The gestural nuances of a conductor have been fully reproduced at a level that was previously unthinkable to me. This is an incredible step forward, given the rigidity of gestures by previous robots. I imagine the robot could serve as an aid, perhaps to execute, in the absence of a conductor, the first rehearsal, before the director steps in to make the adjustments that result in the material and artistic interpretation of a work of music." Yumi is not the first computer artist. In 1973, professor and artist, Harold Cohen created a software program called AARON – a mechanical painter.

Intelligence analysts are swimming in data pouring in from an array of vehicles and platforms -- a problem that isn't new, but for which government leaders still seek the right solutions. To help stem the deluge and better position analysts and key mission-critical data, intelligence community officials are targeting automation as a high priority, with a futuristic vision for applications down the road as well. "A significant chunk of my analytic workforce today, I will send them to a dark room to look at TV monitors to do national security-essential work … but boy, is it inefficient," Robert Cardillo, director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, told reporters at the annual GEOINT Symposium in San Antonio, Texas. "The number of people needed to maintain awareness of, if not exploitation of, one sensor is really daunting. I suspect we're going to get more of those sensors. The near-term goal particularly centers on analysis of full-motion video that streams in from unmanned aerial systems -- "the wolf really close to the door," as Cardillo put it. But he and other officials also are looking toward future uses for different types of automation, including artificial intelligence. And Cardillo, among others, are looking to partner up for help. "As the commercial industry and academic think tanks and advanced science and engineering schools move to artificial intelligence and machine learning, they're all desperate to get a hold of some data with [which] to train their algorithms and teach their machines to learn," Cardillo said. He added that intelligence community leaders, including those at the NGA, are looking at how to safely expose data sets to accelerate development in automated tools. Internally, the agency has launched a new Office of Ventures and Innovation aimed at guiding emerging technology from incubation through the entire life cycle. "To get to this automated, augmented future that we're talking about, we need to coordinate across a lot of different parts of the agency," Anthony Vinci, NGA director of plans and programs, told C4ISRNET. "It's not just a technology issue, it's bringing technology and [research and development] into the operational units, into analysis or into the business services units, human development or finance for business analytics." Vinci said the NGA is working closely with other government agencies, including the Defense Department, to further automation and AI and get to a new level of intelligence and military operations. "How can we use automation to take some of that pressure off of the analysts who are putting together those products?

Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. The author is a Forbes contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer. Over the holiday, I spent a great afternoon at the Boston Museum of Science, which is currently running an exhibition called "Da Vinci – The Genius." The exhibition brings to life the genius of Leonardo da Vinci as an inventor, scientist, engineer, architect, sculptor, and artist.