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this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2025
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.... WTF?
Did you read the article? It describes the situation in detail.
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!
That's what the test will ultimately determine.
My parents worked for EMS. You DO NOT want to hand this over to AI.
EMS is not being handed over to AI. Please read the article, it's about using AI to triage non-emergency calls away from the emergency lines so that the human call staff at the emergency lines are not being kept busy dealing with the non-emergency stuff.
So they are asking a virtual roulette wheel to make the determination if it's an emergency or not.
Modern AI is not a "virtual roulette wheel."
And if you'll read the article, it mentions that they don't have enough staff to handle all the calls they're getting. They have job openings that people simply aren't applying for, it's not a question of funding. They're getting too many phone calls to handle and many of those phone calls should not be going to them in the first place. What should they do?
It's called capitalism. If you can't hire anyone, maybe the pay sucks.
Pay more and more people apply. Also fine folk for misuse of emergency number time.
If there's an insistence on AI for any reason, which almost always comes down to $$$, then have people transfer non emergency to the AI. First contact should be to a person 100% of the time.
You forgot the part where they’re also painfully understaffed. Automating things is not going to fix the issue.
I didn't forget that part. The article indicates that they have job openings that they are simply not getting applicants for. Throwing more money at staffing won't fix that, you can't magically spawn qualified people out of nothing.
I seem to be the only person in this thread who's actually reading and responding to the article, and every response I give instantly gets hit with downvotes. Do people simply want to be angry about AI, and so anything that might interfere with the purity of that anger is unwelcome? Maybe we should just have a daily thread with a title of simply "How about that AI, huh?" That people can post angry comments in without fear of meaningful interruption.
SLC has a glut of qualified people that could staff these offices, the fact they only got a 4% COL raise this year tells you most of why they might have trouble keeping people. The COL of SLC has absolutely skyrocketed since 2019.
But that's actually besides the point, you know the real joke about this, they say there are 15 open positions, yet when you search for dispatch job postings, they don't list any, that's from their own site – only if you dig through SLC's specific job portal do you even find a single posting for dispatch.
Maybe they should spend less time on AI and more time trying to hire actual people.
Thank you for being the first person in this thread to actually go to any sort of effort to dig up factual counterarguments.
Just because you supposedly read the article, doesn’t dismiss our concerns.
No, but I think a minimal threshold for giving those concerns consideration should be some indication that the people with those concerns have read the article.
Glitchvid, for example, has actually gone to the trouble to search job listings on their site. That is a sign of concern worth considering. First one I've seen in this thread.
You have no proof that I had or hadn’t. So, it is my word against yours.
The one thing you forgot is that you are on Lemme. So of course everybody wants to be upset about AI. That's like par for the course.
Oh, I'm not forgetting I'm on Lemmy, I know I'm in a strongly anti-AI bubble here. I just think it's important for bubbles to be challenged, and this particular article seemed to be drawing a particularly strong knee-jerk reaction. I seem to have got a few people to actually read it, at least.
At the end of the day it's not like upvotes or downvotes here matter. These AI systems will get implemented or not based on real-world considerations, not whether it's popular in some particular niche online. It's just nice to keep informed.