We would all love to believe that AI doesn’t have a place. There’s this fear that it will take over jobs, and in some cases it could. However, the world of 911 took the downsides a little too far for entertainment. The truth is, the episode proved that AI has a place.
911 season 9 episode 8 really went into the world of science fiction. SARA decided to take over everything, including working her way into the dispatch servers to avoid being disconnected. In the end, SARA was removed completely, tricked into a thumb drive by Maddie, who had already said that she didn’t think AI had a place in dispatch.
Before the horrors of it, though, there were clear signs as to why AI could be helpful. It all comes down to triaging.
SARA was able to triage calls quickly on 911 season 9 episode 8
We got to immediately see why AI could be useful, initially taking the calls. When there was a genuine call, she would pass things over to a real human. When it came to calls for the wrong reasons, she took over herself. There was even a caller who realized that he shouldn’t have called 911 at all, and she was able to talk him out of it being an emergency situation.
Now, there are people out there who do call 911 for unnecessary reasons. Not everyone knows when to or when not to call the non-emergency lines rather than 911, and then there are some who genuinely believe that they have an emergency when they don’t.
By having AI take the initial calls, it will put less work on the humans, who will then be able to tackle the real emergencies. This could help to speed up call times, as dispatch isn’t sending first responders to something that they’re not needed to, or dispatch can get to the real emergencies sooner because their phone lines are clogged up.
Figuring out a bigger issue with the 911 call
There was one other case when SARA proved useful, and that was when it came to the caller from the mall. SARA was able to capture the data from multiple other calls from the same location, realizing that there was a much more serious emergency. After all, at first, someone saying that they were feeling drowsy in the mall would initially come across as a prank or a non-genuine caller.
SARA could tell that the mall was the problem and that there was the risk of a much bigger emergency. She tackled it swiftly in a way that no other dispatcher could because the humans wouldn’t have had access to all the information. Maddie didn’t take the other calls, so she would have relied on overhearing other calls or something logged in the system from the other calls, which wouldn’t happen.
So, in the end, AI did help to save the day. With that 911 season 9 proved that there is a need for AI under certain circumstances, but there needs to be an override. Humans are still needed, but AI can make a human’s job much easier.
911 airs on Thursdays at 8/7c on ABC.