Microsoft creates virtual assistant

REDMOND, Wash., March 2 (UPI) -- Researchers at Microsoft Corp. in Redmond, Wash., have unveiled Laura, a virtual personal assistant designed to detect impatience and other feelings.

Laura -- which requires a server-quality chip with eight processor cores to handle its artificial intelligence and graphics -- is designed to book meetings and schedule flights while using its decision-making power to determine whether the person using the program seems impatient, and to judge when the user would prefer to schedule an appointment, The New York Times reported Monday.

"What we're after is common sense about etiquette and what people want," said Eric Horvitz, a Microsoft researcher specializing in machine learning.

While current home computing systems do not have the capability to run a program like Laura, Craig Mundie, Microsoft's chief research and strategy officer, said he expects computing systems to become about 50 to 100 times more powerful by 2013.

"We think that in five years' time, people will be able to use computers to do things that today are just not accessible to them," Mundie said.