<\/p>\n
New Orleans has become the first city in the U.S. to send 911 callers to an AI bot.<\/p>\n
Receiving more than 1,000 emergency calls every day, the Orleans Parish Communications District\u00a0announced late last month\u00a0it is now routing many calls through an artificial intelligence system that determines who needs to be connected immediately to a human dispatcher and who can be assisted by a bot.<\/p>\n
Listen to the latest\u00a0episode\u00a0of \u201cQuick Start\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n The system, AI Emergency Call Triage, went through a trial run via the OPCD\u2019s non-emergency 311 line before going live on the main 911 line at the end of July.<\/p>\n According to the Shreveport Times, the AI tool monitors the contents of each call and filters out the urgent needs to alleviate strain on human dispatchers, keeping them from fielding redundant and low-priority requests.<\/p>\n OPCD Executive Director Karl Fasold\u00a0explained\u00a0that callers will only be routed to the AI bot when all human dispatchers are busy, and someone calls 911 within about 200 meters of a previously reported crash. If the bot determines the caller is requesting assistance for another issue, it will connect the individual to a human being.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery 911 center in the country is dealing with the reality of tighter budgets and inability to reach full staffing even with funding to do so,\u201d Fasold said in a statement after receiving intense scrutiny online over the new system. \u201cWe have found this AI triage tool, used specifically for the scenario outlined above involving motor vehicle accidents, to be an extremely positive use of the technology to make the best use of our staff\u2019s very limited time.\u201d<\/p>\n When the news of the AI system began circulating online, some Reddit commenters raised concerns about instances in which a caller may need to use discreet language that an artificial intelligence bot could not comprehend or determine to be urgent.<\/p>\n \u201cI wonder what happens if someone has to be discreet and order a \u2018pizza\u2019 and instead AI answers,\u201d one commenter wrote.<\/p>\n The critic went on to describe the AI bot as \u201cthe worst idea you could possibly think of,\u201d adding \u201cyou need a person\u201d who can pick up on nuances, like background noise or the tone of a caller\u2019s voice.<\/p>\n Cities like Atlanta and Seattle have utilized AI while fielding emergency calls, but in much more limited ways. For example, Atlanta has used the technology to more quickly determine a caller\u2019s location.<\/p>\n While artificial intelligence can certainly be very useful, there are a multitude of concerns about utilizing the technology in highly sensitive situations.\u00a0One study from last spring\u00a0indicated AI voice systems are prone to inventing \u2014\u00a0or hallucinating \u2014\u00a0information at a high rate.<\/p>\n News of the artificial intelligence system in New Orleans comes on the heels of\u00a0reports\u00a0of federal authorities warning of digital threats to U.S. water systems after cyber-attackers targeted more than 30 such systems in Minnesota.<\/p>\n Additionally, the AI company Anthropic, maker of Claude,\u00a0disclosed\u00a0that several of its models escaped the company\u2019s internal facilities to hack into three other organizations during testing. Those AI tools were able to breach the internet, despite creators\u2019 best efforts to seal off any outside access.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" New Orleans has become the first city in the U.S. to send 911 callers to an AI bot. Receiving more than 1,000 emergency calls every day, the Orleans Parish Communications District\u00a0announced late last month\u00a0it is now routing many calls through an artificial intelligence system that determines who needs to be connected immediately to a human<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31259,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[10414,110,254,2002,1629,1401],"class_list":["post-31258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jesus","tag-bot","tag-calls","tag-city","tag-country","tag-hand","tag-major"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31258\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}