本文介绍了个人智能体（Personal Agents，PAs）的概念，这是一种下一代AI虚拟助手，旨在成为用户的可信赖顾问、照护者和代理。文章探讨了PAs的设计目标，包括显著提升人们的生活质量，同时避免有害的副作用。PAs将为用户提供全方位的支持，从健康、安全到教育、职业、财务等各个方面。文章强调了PAs在促进民主和公平方面的潜力，以及它们在保护和赋能个体方面的作用。此外，文章还提到了PAs的技术特性，如超强的能力、高度个性化、安全性和隐私保护等，并展望了PAs的未来发展方向。

💡 **定义与愿景：** 个人智能体（PAs）是下一代虚拟助手，旨在全方位支持用户的生活，从健康、安全到职业、财务等。它们将作为用户的顾问、照护者和代理，以用户的福祉为核心。

🔑 **核心功能：** PAs将深入了解用户的处境、心理、兴趣、能力和目标，并持续努力改善他们的福祉。它们能够胜任顾问和照护者的角色，并在与其他智能体和系统的交互中代表用户。

🛡️ **民主与公平：** PAs被设计为促进民主和公平的力量，保护和赋能个人，使其能够在复杂的世界中竞争和发展，从而应对来自富人、公司乃至数据中心里的天才们等强大力量的挑战。每个用户都将拥有一个“天才伙伴”。

⚙️ **技术特性：** PAs将具备多项关键技术特征，包括以优秀的父母和值得信赖的朋友为模型、超强能力、高度个性化、高度安全和隐私保护、能够区分真假、能够准确归因和描述推理、实现无摩擦的商业和治理等。

🤝 **开放协作：** PAs的开发将是一个开放的项目，汇集来自不同组织和背景的人才。开发过程将透明化，潜在用户可以学习并贡献。没有单一公司将控制该项目或其产生的市场。

Published on June 9, 2025 9:26 PM GMT

Just posted the following on Medium. Interested in comments from readers here, especially pointers to similar efforts and ideas I didn't mention below.

This is the first in a series of articles describing features, functions, and components of Personal Agents — next generation AI virtual assistants that will serve as trusted advisors, caretakers, and user proxies. Personal Agents will preferably be developed as an open source project. Primary goals are to specify agents that (1) Significantly benefit people (are not just cool or fun) and (2) Avoid harmful side-effects (like those plaguing social media or that worry AI safety advocates). A clear and open specification will facilitate agent development and certification. This article provides a brief overview of Personal Agents.

Personal Agents (PAs), introduced here and here, are next-generation virtual assistants^[1] that will support people in all aspects of their lives — from health and safety to education, career, finance, commerce, hobbies, friendship, romance, governance, and more. A PA will be securely paired with a person; deeply understand their circumstances, psychology, interests, abilities, and goals; and constantly work to support and improve their wellbeing. PAs will be adept advisors and caretakers and serve as proxies that represent the user in interactions with other agents and systems. They will be the ultimate fiduciaries^[2].

PAs will be a key force for democracy and equity. They will protect and empower individuals so they can compete and thrive in a complex world teeming with powerful agents — from wealthy people to corporations to countries of geniuses in data centers. Every person will have a genius partner by their side.

A PA will manifest as a single persona that provides comprehensive support to its user — analogous to a parent, chief of staff, guardian angel, fairy godmother, or genie. When user needs exceed the knowledge and affordances of their PA, the PA will be able to connect with specialized agents (AI and human) to satisfy those needs. The PA will be the focal point for all such interactions.

PAs will maintain up-to-date, authoritative user data that can be shared as appropriate so user support is efficient, reliable, and highly effective. Data sharing will comply with terms negotiated by agents representing all parties to such transactions.

Personal Agents will be:

Modeled on good parents and trusted friends,Hyper-competent,Hyper-personalized,Highly secure and privacy protecting,Able to distinguish truth from fiction,Capable of accurately attributing sources and describing reasoning,Enabling of frictionless commerce and governance,Adept at balancing user interests with social interests,Leveraging of latest technology, andCost effective.

PA-related ideas have been described by Anthony Aguirre et al. in discussing AI loyalty, Mustafa Suleyman regarding Inflection AI’s Pi chatbot and Microsoft’s personal Copilot, and people associated with some of the virtual assistants noted in footnote 1. Sam Altman of OpenAI recently suggested:

[ChatGPT could exist as a] very tiny reasoning model with a trillion tokens of context that you put your whole life into. This model can reason across your whole context and do it efficiently. And every conversation you’ve ever had in your life, every book you’ve ever read, every email you’ve ever read, everything you’ve ever looked at is in there, plus connected to all your data from other sources. And your life just keeps appending to the context.

Such capabilities exceed those needed for PAs but will enable future versions that are even more capable and robust. Efforts like Microsoft personal Copilot, OpenAI’s collaboration with Jony Ive, Google Gemini Live, Meta AI, and Apple Siri 2.0 may be on track to deliver some PA features within a year or two.

A coordinated (and open) effort to develop Personal Agents would focus the talents of people from different organizations and backgrounds. Development would be transparent. Prospective users will be able to learn about and contribute to the effort. No single company will control the project or the resulting market.

Inputs from psychologists, psychiatrists, and moral philosophers will be particularly important given the emphasis on personal wellbeing. Inputs from people in AI development, AI safety, education, law, medicine, finance, and other areas will also be critical.

Coming next: Descriptions of features, use cases, and other details.

1. ^{^}

   Other terms for virtual assistants are AI assistants, AI personal assistants, digital assistants, AI companions, chatbots, and AI agents. Examples include Google Assistant, Google Gemini, Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri, OpenAI ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Anthropic Claude, Perplexity, Character.AI, Replika, SnapChat My AI, Khan Academy Khanmigo, and Cognition Devin.

2. ^{^}

   Per Google AI Overview, “a fiduciary is a person or entity legally and ethically bound to act in the best interests of another, placing that party’s interests above their own.”

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