Three years ago, Jeff Bezos announced that drones are eventually going to deliver Amazon orders. In the past year, he brought out Amazon's Alexa artificial intelligence service, which understands speech well enough that you can say, "Alexa, I really need a waffle cone maker," and she'll put one in your Amazon online shopping cart, even though nobody needs a waffle cone maker. Both of these technologies--drones and cloud AI--are exciting today, yet still wobbly works in progress. But in coming years, Amazon or some other company is going to put them together. And that, finally, will evolve into a technology that could become as significant to humans as domesticated dogs.

Greetings and welcome to the PROS Holdings Inc Third Quarter 2016 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. It is now my please to introduce your host Stefan Schulz, Chief Financial Officer. Good afternoon, everyone and thank you for joining us. With me on today's call is Andres Reiner, President and Chief Executive Officer. Before we begin, we must caution you that some of today's remarks, including our guidance, our strategy, our competitive position, future business prospects, revenue, bookings, market opportunities, as well as statements made during the question-and-answer session, contain forward-looking statements. These statements are based on present information and are subject to numerous and important factors, risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ materially from the results implied by these or other forward-looking statements. PROS does not assume any obligation to update the forward-looking statements provided to reflect events that occur, or circumstances that exist, after the date on which they are made. Additional information concerning risks and other factors that may cause actual results to differ can be found in the Company's filings with the SEC. Also, please note that a replay of today's webcast will be available in the Investor Relations section of our website at pros.com. We encourage everyone to review this additional information. Finally, I would like to point out that in addition to reporting financial results in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, or GAAP, PROS reports certain financial results, as well as forward-looking guidance, on a non-GAAP basis. A reconciliation of each non-GAAP measure to the most directly comparable GAAP measure, to the extent available without unreasonable efforts is available on the press release distributed earlier today, and in the Investor Relations section of our website. Good afternoon, everyone and thank you for joining us on today's call.

Symantec Corp. (SYMC) recently announced its latest Symantec Endpoint Protection 14 technology. "Artificial intelligence fused with critical endpoint technologies deliver the most complete endpoint security on the planet," boasts the cybersecurity industry pioneer. As headline data breaches and cybercrime news reach organizations worldwide, Symantec is positioned well to benefit from its cuttingedge integrated cyberdefense prevention and detection. The firm's Endpoint Protection 14 marks the lightest and strongest endpoint protection Symantec has on the market, "providing everything from file reputation and behavioral analysis to advanced machine learning Al," the company says. Endpoint Protection 14 stands as the only solution on the market merging essential endpoint technologies with advanced machine learning and memory exploit mitigation in a single agent.

In terms of technological progress, there is a lack of inter-operability standards for data exchange between applications, which prevents radical personalization. To be truly useful, machine learning systems require greater amounts of personal data – data that is currently siloed in proprietary databases of competing technology companies. Those who have the data hold the power. Some companies, most notably Apple and Viv, have started to democratize this power by experimenting with third-party service integration. Most recently, some of the largest technology companies announced a major partnership to collaborate on AI research that benefits the many, not the few.

Democratic Gov. Gina Raimondo said in a statement Tuesday that she is holding the company accountable because it is "unfairly demanding more money to complete an 8-year-old computer upgrade" and is "trying to double the price of this project." She referred to a 2013 pledge made by CEO Meg Whitman to devote more resources to get the project done in a way state residents deserved.

Social psychologists have long known that humans make snap judgements about each other based on nothing more than the way we look and, in particular, our faces. We use these judgements to determine whether a new acquaintance is trustworthy or clever or dominant or sociable or humorous and so on. These decisions may or may not be right and are by no means objective, but they are consistent. Given the same face in the same conditions, people tend to judge it in the same way. And that raises an interesting possibility.

This article is part of an MIT SMR initiative exploring how technology is reshaping the practice of management. The paradox of automation: Earlier this year, Facebook exorcised those pesky human editors who were introducing political bias into its Trending news list and left the job to algorithms. Now, reports Caitlin Dewey in The Washington Post, the Trending news isn't biased, but some of it is fake. Turns out the algorithms can't tell a real news story from a hoax. Facebook says it can improve its algorithms, but errors of judgment aren't the only pitfall in transferring human tasks to machines.

The world's fastest computer runs a Chinese chip, and that fact hasn't escaped notice by the U.S. government. So how does the U.S. government bludgeon the Chinese chip threat? A new U.S. government working group aims to encourage domestic companies to use homegrown chip technology and resist the urge to buy inexpensive Chinese semiconductors. The White House this week established the Semiconductor Working Group, a private-public advisory group that will create policy and research guidelines for semiconductor development. The ultimate goal is to retain U.S. leadership in semiconductor technology.

Zoltan Istvan is many things: a journalist, a futurist and entrepreneur. Mostly, though, he's been a cheerleader for the transhumanist movement, a philosophy focused on merging humans together with technology. To live forever as a new post-human species. Istvan kicked off a presidential campaign as head of the Transhumanist Party in 2014, mostly to spread the word about the movement. We sat down to talk with him about his experience running for president, and why voters should care about the transhumanist movement. Was the process of running this campaign what you expected? My campaign has been pretty much to always spread the message around transhumanism. It was never to win, and I said that from the very beginning. What I didn't expect is that I would very quickly enter into the top 10 candidates for almost the entire two years. Just three years ago, I signed with one of the major websites that puts you together with candidates.

One the other hand, the job loss of nearly 1.7 million Americans who are currently working as drivers with an average salary of $42,500, could be one of the most negative impacts of this disruption on the US Economy as nearly 1% of the total US workforce is represented by truckers. This would be the first such scenario in history that the middle class would take on such a direct hit by bringing in automation in a single sector. The concerns are found pervading the whole trucking industry as even an online marketplace Quip Sells it, published an infographic signifying the number of jobs that could be lost due to automation led by driverless trucks, while on the surface, this has nothing of value to a business which deals in heavy machinery but this phenomenon will end up affecting all direct and indirect stakeholders. This is where the Government and the Policy Makers come in, as not only will they have to make more laws like the ones released by the Obama Administration on Sept 20 which are the first of their kind federal laws pertaining to the rules for driving automated vehicles, but also make provisions and involve strategists to absorb this massive wave of unemployment back into the economy.