Salt Lake City, plans to implement AI-assisted 911 call triaging to handle ~30% of about 450K non-emergency calls per year
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I'm dumbfounded. I'd be furious if it took more than 20 seconds
I'm a dispatcher (not in the USA) and our managers start flipping out and running round like their heads are on fire if the wait time reaches 30 seconds. If there's more than 3 calls in the emergency queue then they sit down and take them themselves (If you've ever worked in any call centre at all, emergency or not, you'll know shit has to really hit the fan before management will consider doing this!)
Usually high queue time/numbers are just multiple calls for the same incident (think large RTC's or very public assaults/stabbings right in the middle of a heavily trafficked city centre) so we can get that queue down very quickly, especially as 99% of the time any call after the initial one will simply be "we're already aware and we've got crews en route, bye".
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What situation? AI is being used to transfer non-emergency calls away from the emergency lines, keeping the human operators there available to handle the actual emergencies. Non-emergency stuff shouldn't be on that line in the first place. The "WTF" part is people phoning the emergency number with trivialities in the first place, they shouldn't be doing that.
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.
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Kehoe countered that the AI system would interact only with nonemergency callers and that emergency calls to 911 would be routed only to human dispatchers. In fact, she added, “on nonemergency calls, it might detect those elevated stress levels [for callers] and it will automatically default going to a human being as well.”
Are nonemergency calls coming in through a separate number or are they still coming in through the 911 number? I thought nonemergency calls come through a separate number but i only see references to 911 in this article. So which is it? If you call 911 and get an AI then that's terrible. If this is for a dedicated nonemergency line then this sounds great.
Where I work we take both non and emergency calls, and have a separate number for each. The phone system we use will make sure the emergency calls come through first, so it's not uncommon to have zero emergency calls queueing while the non-emergency queue sits at 10-20 minutes (just like any other call centre, we have the boards up on the wall showing the stats).
It seems like this AI thing is trying to solve the problem of people calling the emergency number for a call that doesn't need an emergency response, which is super common. Either people don't know about the non-emergency line, or they think the non-emergency line is for other people and calling the emergency line will get their issue sorted faster. The first kind are usually very apologetic when you ask them to call the non-emergency, the second kind will argue with you and we're instructed to just hang up on them after repeating the instruction to keep the emergency queue free.
The thing is, anyone with half a brain can identify a non-emergency call within max 2 minutes. It's probably the easiest part of the whole job. But it definitely requires a human, because people will call up shouting and screaming like they're mid-way through getting stabbed, when really they're just a grumpy old fuck who's neighbours are playing rap music. And on the flip side, plenty of people are able to make a full-on emergency call in an almost spookily calm tone, and even more so if they're not directly involved (Common example is a teacher or social worker calling something in a child's disclosed to them about their parents). So being able to read between the lines in a way humans are very good at, but robots are not, is obviously super important.
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Is this a good idea..
no
maybe to have in cases where they are under to much load, such as a massive emergency where they get way more calls than they can handle.
as a backup only.
but even then it'll encourage them to have less personnel.
never had a conversation that didn't hallucinate every now and then
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Customer support is annoying or whatever but this is horrifying. Several people will die because of this.
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
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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.
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Without reducing headcount, right? Right?
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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?
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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?
They do want to hire more humans, there are job openings they've posted that are not being fulfilled. Since they're not being fulfilled and they don't have the money to increase their salaries to draw in more, they're having to look for ways to make the resources they do have stretch farther. Hence, AI screening to shunt the non-emergency calls away from their existing human emergency dispatchers.
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It says for non-emergency calls.
It might actually help with real emergency calls getting through faster.
If someone calls 911 how on earth do you know its a non-emergency before speaking with someone?
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Just unlock it using your white voice.
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.
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How long is it going to take to determine that its an emergency? How many are going to mis-identify as a non-emergency. Unless its in the middle of a large emergency where its bound to be overloaded by many callers it should always be a person that classifies this.
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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...)
Either LA is fully broken and needs to be thrown away or you are lying. Leaning towards the latter. I've never not got a person right away ever.
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Very few people call the police non-emergency line because few people even know it and everyone knows 911
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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
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.
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It says for non-emergency calls.
It might actually help with real emergency calls getting through faster.
Unless the AI fucks up and makes it sound like an emergency.
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They should just spend that money on an ad campaign for the non emergency line
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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.
In our society they are the only ones that matter, unless they start to live in fear
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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.
Block and move on
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You said my comment conflicts with the article. In what way? What does the article say happens?
Read the downvotes and stfu.
Edit: Ohhh. This is your troll account. Blocking this AI spam bot.
