This County Is Letting AI Answer Your Non-Emergency Calls

One of the most promising avenues where AI is currently being deployed is medical science. From assisting healthcare experts with diagnosis to untangling the mysteries of protein folding for drug discovery, AI has made numerous breakthroughs. Now, a small county is deploying an AI assistant to handle non-emergency calls as a responder. As part of a four-month pilot program, Lyon County in Kansas is deploying a virtual assistant named Betty to answer non-emergency calls. As per Kansas Today, the AI agent will primarily deal with low-stakes situations such as parking woes and wildlife-related reports. Within a span of three days, the AI responder had already handled over 200 calls.

"If we can take some of those items away and actually give our employees the opportunity to do what they are trained to do, I think even if we are shorthanded, it's going to be a better experience for them," Director of the Lyon County Emergency Communication Center, Roxy VanGundy, was quoted as saying. In a video shared on Facebook, she highlighted that Betty can understand English, in addition to French and Spanish. Moreover, as soon as it detects that the caller is speaking in French or Spanish, the AI agent will switch to that language.

The system isn't too different from what Google has already deployed via its Phone app on Android devices. The feature, known as Call Screening, lets the assistant have a chat with the caller and shows a transcript, so that you can see the conversation and decide on accepting or declining the call. In Betty's case, VonGundy notes that the AI respondent is "highly intelligent and capable AI" despite skepticism. The AI agent is currently being used in a limited capacity, with the data from this being used to make a decision on its wider deployment.

The deployment of AI agents, especially in conversational scenarios, has yielded mixed results. Last year, McDonald's pulled the plug on an AI-powered voice-based ordering system. The system, which was developed in partnership with IBM, was widely ridiculed for making flubs like registering hundreds of nuggets for a single order and concocting bacon ice cream. Earlier this year, Taco Bell also went viral for the hilarious flubs of the AI agent at drive-thru portals, prompting the fast food giant to rethink its AI investment strategy. Needless to say, deploying an AI agent in an emergency response agency would raise some eyebrows.

Lyon County is taking a cautious approach with Betty. Betty only works the dispatch station's non-emergency line; all emergency calls will continue to be handled by humans. If a caller describes a situation that requires urgent care, a human emergency responder will take over. "If anything sounds even remotely like an emergency, Betty instantly hands you over to a real 9-1-1 dispatcher," says the team. Simply put, the local administration is applying Betty in the capacity of an AI-powered helper, instead of its own autonomous agent. 

"Humans will always handle emergencies—Betty just lightens the load on routine calls," notes Lyon County's official Facebook post. The overarching idea is to let Betty handle general-purpose queries and non-critical situations, so that human emergency responders can focus on the more urgent cases and avoid burnout as they continue to deal with staffing shortages. As of this writing, Betty is still in the early days of its pilot program, so time will tell how the AI is ultimately regarded as part of the station's routine.