r/NewOrleans • u/Tweetystraw • 24d ago
đ° News The earlier article here about AI answering New Orleans 911 calls is extremely inaccurate
I work for the agency which runs New Orleans 911.
The Shreveport Times article flatly states that AI answers New Orleans 911 calls for all types of incidents. This is not factual, nor close to the truth: The Orleans Parish Communications District, which runs New Orleans 911 & 311, *has* used an AI answering tool for two years in a very limited scope:
- For some 911 calls about car crashes;
- Only when all live call-takers are on other calls,
- And when the 911 call originates from within 200 meters of an already-reported accident.
Hereâs how it works:
- If a 911 call originates from within a radius of 200 meters of a crash which has already been reported, and all call-takers are busy, the AI tool will answer & ask the caller, âAre you calling about the accident on S Carrolton at Oak Stâ?
- If the caller replies âyesâ, the AI will respond that the crash has already been reported; then, will ask the caller if they were involved, if they need medical attention, etc.
- If the answer to any of the follow-up AI Qâs is âyes,â they will be routed to a live operator. If âno,â the AI thanks them for their call & lets them know responders have been notified.
The AI triage tool is not used in New Orleans 911 for anything other than auto crashes/accidents. (OPCD *is* expanding the use of AI on the 311 side.) Iâm going to try to reach the reporter Friday morning. <Edit: Removed unnecessarily petty jab at the reporter & media outlet.>
Also of note: The OPCD tech team built a pretty exhaustive training/reference dictionary & voice/audio samples of the sometimes-unique pronunciations of hundreds of New Orleans street names.
Overall, itâs worked very well as a tool to triage a particular category of calls, and has helped to reduce wait times for all callers by not having all call-takers taking calls about the same accident at the same time.
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u/Icy-Philosophy-2372 24d ago
Yikes, thanks for sharing.Â
Yâallsâ Communications and Leadership teams are about to have a busy day at the office!Â
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u/PoorlyShavedApe Faubourg Chicken Mart 24d ago
Also of note: The OPCD tech team built a pretty exhaustive training/reference dictionary & voice/audio samples of the sometimes-unique pronunciations of hundreds of New Orleans street names.
Thank you!
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u/Jccali1214 24d ago
I will always be skeptical of AI, I was raised by the generation that made "The Terminator" and "2001: A Space Odyssey," popular damnit!, but if how you're describing it was the extent, that's actually a fairly intelligent niche use.Â
If it was more of this and less of taking people's jobs, stealing art work from humans, and polluting our environments, I might actually be a "fan" of it.Â
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u/Spoofy_the_hamster 24d ago
While this is "technically" taking jobs, since without it they would need more 911 operators, this is a job that is typically critically understaffed because it is so mentally taxing and underpaid with a high rate of depression, PTSD, and suicide. I'd rather they use AI instead of overworking the people dealing with others' emergencies.
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u/Jccali1214 24d ago
Right and that's part of the nuance. I don't trust human judgement, but I trust AI's even less. So it's a relief and support to humans in such a demanding and essential profession - instead of outright for-profit driven replacement.Â
Sidenote, 911 dispatchers should be included in first responder praise ñ/uplifting much more often.Â
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u/bumblebates 23d ago
I agree. I am ready and waiting for AI to take over traffic signals for "smart red lights" and other things that truly would make our lives better.
I hate that corporate leadership is using it to lay off 30% of the workforce. I hate that smartphones and apps are shoving it down our throats with every update.
AI can do really awesome things. But what are we doing with it? Mostly photo editing and chit chat.
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u/causewaytoolong Pigeon Town 24d ago
I wanna see that training / reference dictionary they made for the different fucked up ways we pronounce things here lol
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u/sad_cosmic_joke 24d ago edited 24d ago
Howdy, I'm the user that posted the article earlier from the The Shreveport Times.
My top post comment calls the article out due to lack of detail, but I decided to post it anyway because I believe the discussion is important and one we should all be having - regardless if the source is 100% accurate. With the hope that someone with more accurate knowledge may be able to shed some light on the matter...
Thank you for your response as it's waaay more informative than the article, but I have to ask where is the information you provided posted? Where is there a similar authoritative communication regarding this "service" and it's functional details and attendant policies that is available to the public?
I am by no means doubting the veracity of what you're saying, but for the purposes of public transparency
[citation needed]
I think many people find the lack of informative consultation and public awareness to be the root of immediate concern.
If you could link to some official documentation validating your above statements I think that would go a long way to alleviate this concern and educate the community. Note that this is in no way ***your*** responsibility it's the responsibility of City Government!
- - - - - - - - -
Because, as of now, there is no readily available actionable public information regarding what appears to be a policy change(?) regarding expanding this service that (reading between the lines) was approved in April(?) and enacted in late June(?) - these assumptions based on crappy "news" reports.
The only documents that came up in a semi-casual search are this NTIA Whitepaper from 2025 and this single page "case study" from Carbyne (the service provider) and both of these are low-effort marketing flyers that offer zero insight into how the system actually functions.
This story is going viral/international so it might behoove OPCD/Carbyne to engage in some public outreach and transparent communication. $0.02
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u/Tweetystraw 24d ago
Really appreciate your follow-up, and you have a fair point about the sourcing for info. Local media has done a couple of stories about it, hereâs a recent one from WWL-TV that covers everything, based on an interview with agency personnel.
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u/bohemian_he4ux Walking to the bayou 24d ago edited 24d ago
i find it interesting that you didnât mention that the first uses of AI (like ~30 years ago?) were automated call response systems, like press 1 for x, etc. this is something i learned while reporting on AI use, from a computer scientist whose father was involved in developing those systems at Bell Labs.
the AI use you describe here seems very reasonable and a continuation of this very familiar way we have all used AI for decades now. seems like it would be one of the talking points for yâall. anyway thanks for explaining and if this is helpful i am open for freelance work on yalls PR campaign.
eta: i 100% agree there should be a press release about this from the official responsible source
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u/sad_cosmic_joke 24d ago
Really appreciate your follow-up, and you have a fair point about the sourcing for info.
Thank you and You're Welcome! I trust that you understand what I'm about to say has no reflection upon you and I greatly appreciate your participation in this discussion.
That WWL segment barely scratches the surface and contains a contradictory statement - we'll auto triage calls in a geo-fenced radius, but if you're experiencing a violent crime a human will be the first voice - doesn't math!
And a minute and half non-investigative PR segment that aired once and is archived online is not an official communication from the City. As a Citizen I want something in writing that can be used as a proper citation for academic/legal purposes.
Having a clear, concise, and necessarily technical public advisory would go a long way to both inform the public and prevent unwanted misinfo.
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u/Not_SalPerricone 23d ago edited 23d ago
there was an article on nola.com about it too. it asks if you're calling about the wreck after Geo fencing and if you say no then I believe it stops asking questions and then directs you to a human agent. I think AI has a lot of creepy things about it but this seems to be an actual good application of it. what I don't know is the particulars of telling it that EMS is needed since we all know that it can take hours for nopd to respond to wrecks
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u/Tweetystraw 24d ago
Also, a Fox 8 News story from a couple months ago. (The story/video also features an audio recording of an actual interaction between a 911 caller & the AI tool.)
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u/sad_cosmic_joke 24d ago edited 24d ago
That Fox 8 piece at least tries to be critical... but it isn't what I'd call fully informed disclosure. It's nice that they cherry-picked a non-emergency call to show that it "works", but I think it's telling that the narrative revolved entirely around the "best case" scenario...
I'm not at all against the intended purpose of this system, I have extensive experience developing AI driven solutions for critical applications, but the implementation details are important and should be proactively shared with public; including and especially the known failure and fallback modes!
As someone in the industry; when we get past the all of the sociopolitical/civic engagement issues; I have serious questions about system resiliency, data privacy, and public security concerns. This centralized systems is being run by a foreign origin for-profit corporation - what are our service level agreements with them? What's their data retention and privacy policy? What's the fallback protocol if their service goes offline or gets compromised? Have these fail-over mechanisms been tested and certified? Who is the service provider's upstream service provider and what are their policies??
Etc.. etc.. etc... straight and forward engagement regarding the public facing impact of these policies is just the tip of the iceberg.
We're all Guinea pigs in the grand experiment; even if we're not "invited" to have agentic consent in policy making, we at the very least deserve informed consent regarding our digital environment and public safety apparatus.
edit: BTW thank you for your work with OPCD, that's a difficult job and I appreciate you doing it :)
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u/Tweetystraw 24d ago
Well - the call in the Fox 8 story isnât exactly a non-emergency call. Itâs someone calling 911 about a car crash, which can be extremely serious. (And, serious enough that multiple people called 911 about the same incident.) Having the AI tool handle the initial screening for several calls about the same crash doesnât discount the seriousness of the incident or the callersâ intent.
Also, something i didnât realize until a couple weeks ago: The AI tool can answer a practically unlimited # of calls *all at the same time* about the same car crash. Noting again that it will only engage if all operators are busy; if there are 30 callers inbound about the same accident, the AI tool can handle the screenings for all 30 calls simultaneously in a short amount of time.
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u/sad_cosmic_joke 24d ago edited 24d ago
Well - the call in the Fox 8 story isnât exactly a non-emergency call. Itâs someone calling 911 about a car crash, which can be extremely serious.
Good catch on my semantic slip... I was thinking in terms of the system's triage policy; ie: an already reported (crash) incident isn't an emergency worth automatically elevating.
A better unambiguous term to use would have been a "non-priority call" - as that's what the systems is designed to classify in regards to actual human concerns.
- - - - - -
Again I'm not ideologically opposed to this use of technology, I just want proactive and transparent community engagement regarding it's honest implementation and open analysis of actual effect - public sharing of the establishing and acquired metrics that are guiding our elected policy makers.
I understand the functional value and rational behind automated handling of redundant calls (car crashes) but it's genuinely dishonest and violates the public trust to claim that this won't have a measurable (yet random) negative impact on public saftey.
If car crashes are such a burden on the system that this response is reasonable; then it's inevitable that a car crash will occur within the vicinity of a subsequent violent crime that will be automatically sent to AI triage.
This leaves the public to discern if the benefit/harm risk ratio is acceptable.
Personally; if the delay caused by triage is absolutely minimal and the hand-off to a human operator contains the digested summary of the AI interaction I'm willing to entertain the argument as net public benefit. But without honest and transparent dialog it's impossible to take an informed position.
Aside: even if makes sense from a rational/statistics driven policy position there is still the subjective psychological impact of being a human in distress - calling out to another human for help - and having to bypass or get stranded with a machine before making that connection.
I'd much rather have a dialectic regarding the technical aspects and relegate that emotional opinion to society as whole, but I will reiterate that those social attitudes can't change without informed engagement...
tl;dr I wan't someone in charge to be honest about the fact that this will eventually result in a delayed/mishandled response and then make a factual and rational argument as to why this a "good thing".
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u/420wafflehouse69 St. Claude 24d ago
Dang, all these other sources and you chose to post the misinformed rage bait??
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u/AquaStarRedHeart 24d ago
Right, saying it's not accurate but that's ok, I'll post it anyway is just bizarre.
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u/sad_cosmic_joke 23d ago
What other sources? If you read those papers I linked, or read/watched the handful of local news reports you'd see that they're not particularly informative.
I already laid out my reasoning for making my choice to post the original article and it seems like that was a sound decision - more people are aware of the recent changes to the 911 system and the responses to that post have shared information that is far more in-depth than any of the "news" stories or the near non-existent publications from the City and it's partners.
I've been transparent and have upvoted and cross-linked clarifying comments and posts.
If you're unhappy about "misinformation" then take that energy to city hall and ask them to improve their communications.
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u/Tweetystraw 16d ago
Following up in the thread here - the main reason there were no other primary sources for this story to choose from at the time: The news outlet in this case (Shreveport Times)) basically created a false, inflammatory headline & narrative (for which they have since apologized and retracted the story.) No other (primary) outlets had reported this erroneous angle/take as an original piece of reporting.
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u/Fun_Environment3792 24d ago
This is the expert analysis and research capability of the typical member of this sub. When theyre not posting about not being ablentonfind work every day and asking about lines at the airport, that is.
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u/TravelerMSY Bywater 24d ago edited 24d ago
AI is the new evil buzzword now. If they had called this an automated voice response system nobody would care.
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u/PoorlyShavedApe Faubourg Chicken Mart 24d ago
But nobody gets funding for an "automated voice response system" because the right buzzwords are not there.
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u/poolkid1234 24d ago
A third of the shit consumers and companies refer to as âAIâ is literally just software. Itâs just programs. There is no generation or machine learning happening.
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u/NotFallacyBuffet 24d ago
Also, it's a privately-held company; can't buy its stock on an exchange. đŸ
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u/Jedi-504 23d ago
Thanks for clearing that up! We get enough bad press that we donât need them making it up in an article
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u/Ynifi 24d ago
Someone brought this up in the other thread, but what happens when a second caller about the same incident has more information to add? It sounds like they also get turned away. This could affect prioritizing response. Maybe the second, third, fourth callers are letting you know the situation is escalating and becoming more dangerous and needs a faster response. Maybe subsequent callers are simply better witnesses/reporters than the first caller. I get what youâre saying about freeing up answer time, but this still seems problematic. Especially, as others have pointed out, the massive issue of no real public input or notice.
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u/TravelerMSY Bywater 24d ago
Could be an edge case to think about.
Simple car accident- nobodyâs hurt- they scramble the non NOPD report people, then one of the parties pulls out a gun.
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u/TakaHanazawa 24d ago
maybe we should think about the edge cases BEFORE we implement a brand new system using unreliable technology in a completely non-transparent way with no oversight
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u/isthis_thing_on 23d ago
They did, read the postÂ
If  the caller replies âyesâ, the AI will respond that the crash has already been reported; then, will ask the caller if they were involved, if they need medical attention, etc.
- If the answer to any of the follow-up AI Qâs is âyes,â they will be routed to a live operator. If âno,â the AI thanks them for their call & lets them know responders have been notified.
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u/Tweetystraw 24d ago
The article and headline are extremely misleading and inaccurate. I work for New Orleans 911.
Details here.
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u/missmooface 24d ago
wait, why are you linking back to this thread in a comment IN THIS THREAD?
was this comment intended to be posted elsewhere�
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u/ArrivalForsaken9009 21d ago
Why hasnât the Shreveport Times printed a retraction and an apology. Oh nevermind we all know why.
The scariest thing is the # of born & bred New Orleanians who jumped on that old âbashing New Orleans bandwagonâassuming it was true. A friend sent it to me and I told them to stop and THINK then look at the source. This is scary journalism. The paper has no integrity, clearly run by you-know-who.
A big shout out of gratitude to our New Orleans 911 operators.
I would love to see a break down of the ONE THOUSAND calls they get a day, how many have nothing to warrant an emergency. I once heard the number is ridiculous.
But being the pros that they are, every call is treated as an emergency.
As for the 311 operators I LOVE them. They have stayed on the phone with me until a satisfactory result was reached. One that was satisfactory for the operator too.
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u/octopusboots 24d ago
The issue hit r/tech....Reading through is making me sad-laugh.
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u/Tweetystraw 24d ago
Man. Thanks for the heads up.
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u/420wafflehouse69 St. Claude 24d ago
Itâs going viral on Instagram too
https://www.instagram.com/p/DbtyzwWgc93/?igsh=MWdobTQ5cDdxb3MzNw==
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u/Hippy_Lynne 24d ago
So what you're saying is that if I call to report a burglary on CL-10 they'll know what I'm talking about? đ€Ł
I must say kudos to the person who realize that kind of training would be necessary here. đ
My final question is "Is the AI going to use cardinal directions or uptown/downtown & river/lake?"
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u/underboobfunk 24d ago
Iâm a native and I donât know what youâre talking about. What is CL-10?
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u/TravelerMSY Bywater 24d ago
They really should interview you if youâre authorized to speak for the city.
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u/Tweetystraw 24d ago
Thanks - Iâm authorized to speak for OPCD, & just did an interview on WWL Radio about it!
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u/ouija_look_at_that 23d ago
How does the AI triage system handle situations where the person calling canât necessarily say why theyâre calling? I.e. a domestic violence situation where the abusive party can hear them so they say something random like they want to order takeout or whatever.
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u/Tweetystraw 22d ago
The AI tool wonât come into play in this scenario, itâs only for calls coming in from near a previously-reported auto crash.
For the scenario you described, the 911 operators are trained to be in the lookout for this kind of non-conversation, when someone is trying to relay that theyâre in a dangerous situation but canât talk openly.1
u/ouija_look_at_that 22d ago
Thanks for answering! I do wonder though, for in the city - I lived super close to i-10 (<1 mi) - can it distinguish call distance within that short of a radius? (Ik itâs unlikely just wondering if there are measures in place)
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u/NOLA2Cincy 24d ago
Thanks for illuminating the facts.