While I think AI has an important role in numerous facets of our lives, I do not think the technology is anywhere near where we want it for a major city to deploy it for a vast and critical role like 911. In this article, it mentions how Seattle's Fire Department and Boston's Emergency Medical Services are two other cities that leverage AI as a triage tool.

In June, reporting from the Seattle Times revealed that the Seattle Fire Department had been deploying an AI-powered triage tool similar to Carbyne's product for nearly two years. The tool in question, developed by Denmark-based company Corti, monitored live medical calls and advised operators on where and when to dispatch immediate services. Corti's AI was also deployed by Boston Emergency Medical Services, according to the company.

Where this differs dramatically from what New Orleans is doing is that firefighting and emergency medical services are narrow slices of 911 operations. Current AI technology can do a pretty good job at being trained on these narrow tasks since you can feed it data to cover these specific events. It does not have to sort through nearly as much information, since instead of dealing with all 3 services, it is dealing with just one.

Maybe I am wrong, and honestly I would hope that I am and that this rollout and usage will be an improvement for the citizens of New Orleans. That said, if I could wave a magic wand and control the rollout, I would first try this in small- and medium-sized cities. There are tons of smaller cities in the suburbs that you could safely have both the AI and a human operator on at the same time to make sure it can handle the workloads correctly. Going to a major city is a significant jump and something I do not think the technology is ready for yet.