Oliver V. Smith

I was a 911 dispatcher for 11 years and this is the worst idea you could possibly think of. You have scenarios where the person can’t speak well either language barriers, injuries or if they’re in a domestic situation and they pretend to call for pizza or something you need a person. You have to be able to determine how someone feels or pick up on what they aren’t saying or how they’re saying things. Same goes for open lines and hang ups. A real person needs to answer the phone not only to ensure the correct response is sent to the right place but to offer piece of mind to the caller and makes them feel safer. Situations where I had to give CPR instructions to a mother and father who’s baby wasn’t breathing was a constant occurrence and you have to be able to calm people down, an AI is not doing that ever. Same goes for dispatching calls, AI cannot do that, in theory it sounds ok for that portion but you have to acknowledge what resources are on hand, where people are, GPS isn’t always accurate so when we started using systems to automatically reroute units who were flagged as “closer” they usually weren’t. But a real person who lives in that county and knows the area, where the stations are, who’s in a move up or coverage or areas that are blocked off due to events that aren’t always in our mapping systems. The list goes on. Terrible idea