AI now handling Weber County non-emergency dispatch calls - KUTV

AI now handling Weber County non-emergency dispatch calls

OGDEN, Utah (KUTV) — For the past month, callers to the Weber County non-emergency line have been greeted by an artificial intelligence agent instead of a human dispatcher.

“Thank you for calling the public safety non-emergency line,” a voice says as soon as the call starts.

The AI system is designed to handle routine, non-emergency calls, allowing human dispatchers to focus more of their attention on 911 calls and other urgent situations.

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The process has been in the works for about a year and a half, but only recently went live.

2News called the number and asked a couple people if they could tell if it was AI.

“You know what? I would say no actually,” Angie Smulkis said.

“It kind of sounds like just a telemarketer kind of voice,” Soren Puckett said.

Weber 911 Executive Director Kevin Rose said some callers sometimes don't realize they're speaking with an AI agent until partway through the conversation.

“Halfway through the conversation, [one] caller stops and says, ‘Hey, wait a minute, is this a real person?’” Rose said.

2News asked Smulkis and Puckett how they feel about AI handling non-emergency calls.

“Honestly, I think it’s kind of scary,” Smulkis said.

“Kind of dystopian,” Puckett said.

The idea is to help human dispatchers focus on the most important calls while the AI agent handles the more routine ones.

When someone calls the Weber County non-emergency number, the AI agent first asks what they need help with.

“If the caller is calling about something it can handle, it takes care of it, whether it transfers them to another agency, or to another jurisdiction, another department, or if it just provides them information,” Rose said.

During a demonstration, Rose showed how the system could handle a call about a missing dog.

The AI agent asked several questions including what city, whether the animal was acting aggressively, whether anyone was in danger of being bitten or attacked, and more.

When Rose explained that the dog was simply missing, the AI agent transferred the call to animal control.

The system can handle a number of different topics, and Rose says they’re constantly adding to those topics as needed.

It can also recognize when a situation may require a higher level of response and can upgrade it to a 9-1-1 call.

“It will look at phrases the caller says, maybe the temperament of the caller, if they're sounding excited or anxious or scared,” Rose said. “It will flag that and say this is probably more of an emergency call, and it will escalate that call and send it immediately to a dispatcher as a high-priority call.”

Weber 911 handled about 280,000 calls last year, according to Rose. About two-thirds of those were non-emergency calls. Currently, the AI agent is handling about 10% of the non-emergency calls.

“If we can hit even 25% of those, offload those to this AI agent, that's significant,” he said.

The idea is to give human dispatchers more time to focus on calls where they’re the most needed.

“And that is our objective, to be able to focus our employees on 911 calls, dispatching, fire and police, and ensuring that we are able to answer those 911 calls as quickly as possible,” Rose said.

People who don't want to interact with the AI don’t have to. Rose said callers can ask to speak with a person, and the system can transfer them to a human dispatcher.

He also said the AI is designed to transfer a call over to a dispatcher when it can't handle the caller's request.

“At the end of the day, if the AI agent can't handle the topic that you're calling about, it's going to send you right to a dispatcher,” Rose said. “There's not going to be a huge delay in getting to a real person if it's needed.”

The use of AI for non-emergency dispatch isn't limited to Weber County. A Salt Lake City Request for Proposals shows the city is also exploring a similar technology for handling some non-emergency calls.

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