A new U.S. Patent Application 20080082465 has been published in April. The assignee is Microsoft Corporation and Bill Gates is listed as one of the inventors. This Patent Application describes an intelligent personalized agent which monitors, regulates, and advises a user in decision-making processes for efficiency or safety concerns.

The agent monitors an environment and present characteristics of a user and analyzes such information in view of stored preferences specific to one of multiple profiles of the user. Based on the analysis, the agent can suggest or automatically implement a solution to a given issue or problem. In addition, the agent can identify another potential issue that requires attention and suggests or implements action accordingly. Furthermore, the agent can communicate with other users or devices by providing and acquiring information to assist in future decisions. All aspects of environment observation, decision assistance, and external communication can be flexibly limited or allowed as desired by the user.

It is interesting and frightening at the same time.

Such implementation [of the guardian angel] may be presented in the form of a software assisted mind amplifier. The amplifier analyzes preferences and predicts future actions based on the analysis. [...] The guardian angel can continuously monitor a variety of factors in a user’s environment, including aspects related to: location, time, velocity, acceleration, local commerce/retail structures, altitude, temperature, biographical information, proximity/relationship to other objects, capability of other objects, application/relevancy/usage, and Internet/email configuration. Mechanical and/or electromagnetic devices may be used to monitor a user’s physical/mental state within the context of a particular environment. For example, a sensor can be attached to the user to monitor his/her heartbeat with respect to his/her current activity. [...] Furthermore, a device may directly interact with a brain without bulky attachments. [...] A guardian angel can release real time health information with the user’s doctor or caretaker. […] Any of the above information can be shared or held private as desired by the user.

Of course, Microsoft thinks about security measures to prevent information leakage and external intervention.

The guardian angel facilitates protection of information through user preferences with respect to negotiations, sales, cost-benefit analysis, etc. In the event of a security breach (e.g., a scam, virus, e-mail spam, etc.), the broadcast device [...] may immediately erect a barrier to prevent further damage to the guardian angel. Examples of security breaches include a financial manager that is tricked into expending money away to other devices, a hacker who obtains personal information, and an advertiser who sends e-mail spam to the user. Once the security breach is contained, the decision-making component may step in to repair and remedy the damage already occurred.

It looks like a jump into the future. However, just imagine if due to a little bug in decision-making algorithms the “angel” will advise the user to take a wrong medicine…

Tags: microsoft, monitoring, patents