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.
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.
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.
Unlikely. AI is cheaper than humans, that’s the whole point. And you have no idea how well it’ll be able to do the job. Neither do they, which is why they’re planning a test first.
I absolutely do have an idea how well it’ll be able to do the job, based on AI’s past performances in basically every other area, knowing its strong and weak points and knowing the job very well myself. Obviously I don’t know for sure, but I’m not hopeful!
The situation is WTF.
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.
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?
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.
So they have money to spend on AI that will absolutely not be able to do the job half as well as a human, but not any money to spend on humans. Got it
Unlikely. AI is cheaper than humans, that’s the whole point. And you have no idea how well it’ll be able to do the job. Neither do they, which is why they’re planning a test first.
I absolutely do have an idea how well it’ll be able to do the job, based on AI’s past performances in basically every other area, knowing its strong and weak points and knowing the job very well myself. Obviously I don’t know for sure, but I’m not hopeful!