Your next 911 call in New Orleans could be handled by an AI chatbot

Well, I don't see any way this could backfire, do you?

Yes, this is a real thing they're trying out in NOLA. They're going to use AI chatbots to help process emergency 911 calls.

I guess they saw how well it's been working at the Taco Bell drive-thru.

Here's the Shreveport Times:

AI is now answering 911 emergency calls in Louisiana's largest city and one of the cities with the highest call rates in the U.S.
The OPCD is using Carbyne's AI Emergency Call Triage, with triage being the process of analyzing and prioritizing emergency calls. The AI system assesses incoming calls and can provide immediate feedback to callers.
This is intended to handle the increase of calls that are related to one incident, so callers get automatically routed to an AI agent who asks if they are calling regarding the incident. If the answer is yes, then callers can receive information or updates, and if it's no, then the callers are transferred to a human.

So the idea is that if 30 people call about one thing, AI can handle it, but if it's a new and separate emergency, they're going to make you go through just one small step before getting to a human.

Because when seconds matter, let's gamble on AI understanding what's going on.