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Posted on 08/09/2026 3:14:56 PM PDT by Libloather
New Orleans has become the first city in the US to use artificial intelligence to answer emergency 911 calls — but critics warn it could have deadly consequences.
The Orleans Parish Communication District — which gets over a thousand emergency dials a day, in what is among the highest volume of calls in the country — is routing the 911 calls to an AI agent that decides which ones get bumped to human dispatchers and which get handled by the bot itself, according to the Shreveport Times.
“I was a 911 dispatcher for 11 years and this is the worst idea you could possibly think of,” warned an online critic using the name Boxy, who claimed to be a first responder.
The new tool, known as AI Emergency Call Triage, was first deployed in Louisiana’s largest city in late July after being tested on its 311 hotline.
The triage bot analyzes calls to prioritize which emergencies should be handled by humans, while it handles repeat calls or low-priority ones to avoid inundating dispatchers, the Times explained.
OPCD Executive Director Karl Fasold, however, emphasized that the AI is not replacing human dispatchers, and said the system will mainly be used when the caller is within roughly 200 meters of a crash that has already been reported and when all human call-takers are busy, according to local CBS News affiliate WWL-TV.
Critics, nonetheless, fear it could have deadly consequences.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
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Probably will turn out better than another spate of dei incrementers.
My wife was at the Miramar Air Show working the ARES (ham radio) to support show logistics. San Diego Sheriff's Office staff invited her to apply as a dispatcher. I was especially proud of her performance in the North County fires. She was working "coast" radio when the radio tower in San Marcos burned down. Her radio could still hear "coast" and all of "north county". She stayed all night handling a ton of sheriff and fire traffic.
We moved to Idaho in Dec 2000 and Chubbuck PD picked her up for police/fire/EMS/911. She is the first dispatcher to serve long enough to retire. It was a great run for her.
Give her a big hug from me. A very impressive Resume. :)
Yup. People in New Orleans — and public employees especially — tend to have a casual attitude toward their duties.
I was in NOLA in January and fell down hard on some old steps. 911 got an ambulance there quickly. And took me to an actual hospital emergency room with human Mds. Very expensive until my insurance decided to pay for it two months later.
I can only imagine the idiotic things AI might cause. Heart attacks patients sent to the vet?
I have a friend who went on vacation Puerto Rico. She had a medical emergency. She was delivered to a veterinary hospital. Ooops. Not the right place. It took time to correct, but she was finally delivered to a human ER.
can their 911 AI understand Gullah and Ebonics?
I support this 100%. Those ignorant ebonic mumbling imbeciles that staff our system has. And, unlike AI they do not listen to what is being said or do not understand it.
Good question.
Your mention of Gullah reminded me of the challenge I had as a new second lieutenant in a field artillery missile battery to understand the supply sergeant who had a Gullah heritage. I had gone to school with black students from the age of 5 but my ear was not tuned to Gullah dialect or speech patterns. AI may face a significant challenge to learning in that regard.
Was it in New Orleans where the had the 911 operator who just hung up on people ?
Good thing no one has to depend on them in life-and-death situations.
AI
Automated messages with press 1-99 are not appropriate for a 9-11 line.
It needs to be a human at least for now.
Look for the YouTube videos of a man trolling an AI job interview, the latter using the Pluto service. In one, the troller asks Pluto to speak in the yips of a fox, and then to translate those yips into French.
A friend who lived in the Ninth Ward though explained how he worried more about a hurricane bringing a storm surge in Lake Pontchartrain and collapsing the industrial canal -- which is exactly what Katrina did. One could not miss the canal because it loomed over that section of the city. So why wasn't it maintained and reinforced?
Unfortunately, in the 1980s, the rise of black political machine power led to the election of corrupt and incompetent city officials, who then appointed and hired loyalists who comprehensively looted and mismanaged local government. This wrecked the essential housekeeping of municipal flood protection. The old white political and business elite of New Orleans had limited corruption by keeping it an elite enterprise and paying attention to essentials.
LMAO, I thought I was exaggerating.
You mean like, “press 8 for Swahili”?
Oh, you'll still get them, once the AI clears you through as important enough.
Your friend looks like a dog?
No. She doesn't speak Spanish very well.
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