Is this a good idea..

Customer support is annoying or whatever but this is horrifying. Several people will die because of this.

When the operator identifies the call as a non-emergency (which takes an absolute maximum of 2 minutes, even for very complicated calls), they simply say "please call the non-emergency line on XXX, thanks, bye". Why is the AI required?

I agree that people shouldn't be calling the emergency line with rubbish, but unfortunately they do, because the non-emergency line isn't as well publicized and even if they do know about it people think that "non-emergency" means "we can't be bothered dealing with it" and so calling the emergency line somehow means their issue will be taken more seriously.

Why is the AI required?

Because they don't have enough human operators to field all of the calls they're getting. If they did then they wouldn't be having to look into using AI to screen them.

This is in the article.

That... doesn't answer my question at all. Why is the AI specifically required? How is it an improvement over making the job more attractive to humans and getting more of them to do the job instead?

It says for non-emergency calls.

It might actually help with real emergency calls getting through faster.

Just unlock it using your white voice.

In an ideal world, if it's someone who immediately mentions that it's third time they've called this week about a neighbor having a dead tree in their garden, or someone's mad because someone else parked in "their" spot, someone's calling the fire department on someone having a bbq or someone's stubbed their toe, that sort of thing can get put way down the "call back later" list

Everything else gets put through to a person. In LA it's not unusual to wait 15+ minutes after you call 911; most cities are going to be shorter, and if the wait is under a minute, you don't need the AI triage. If you do have a wait and block out 25% of calls which are obviously a waste of time with AI, you can significantly reduce that (ideally in addition to hiring more operators, but let's be realistic...)

you're too concerned about those "consequences" but have you considered that they get to fire people as well and save money?

did you think of all the taxes they'll cut from the rich? no, you only think about yourself and what will happen to you in an emergency

It says for non-emergency calls.

It might actually help with real emergency calls getting through faster.

did you think of all the taxes they’ll cut from the rich? no, you only think about yourself and what will happen to you in an emergency

This is what it comes down to.

Rich people matter.

I'm not going to argue with you. AI blows. There are article out there about companies hiring people back after going to AI. It really is a snake oil product that corporations have gobbled up. It's got it's use cases as a tool, but not as a human replacement, especially in matters of live and death.

You can look up and research some articles of you want, or don't. Clearly your opinion on the matter is not popular, and that could be some hive mind, or it could be because everyone else sees the problems that you don't.

Putting a system in place that can't actually think at all and have it try and comprehend what is or is not an emergency, to me, is a terrible idea, and doomed to fail. Take that as you will, I won't be following up with anything else. You can have the final word if you want, because I just can't be bothered to care.

You said my comment conflicts with the article. In what way? What does the article say happens?

Block and move on

You kid but voice recognition doesn't handle accents as well wherein accents is defined as anything other than what you hear on the news.