- AI voice assistant Aurelian is helping 911 call centers handle non-emergency calls like noise complaints and lost wallets
- Aurelian is already live in over a dozen U.S. cities
- The AI aims to free up human dispatchers for real emergencies and reduce wait times
The idea of AI helping out with emergencies rightly raises some suspicious eyebrows, but there may be a way for the technology to ease the demands on overstretched 911 emergency operators without becoming an emergency itself.
That’s the pitch from a startup called Aurelian, which has begun rolling out a voice AI agent to help 911 dispatch centers handle the tidal wave of non-emergency calls that come in every day.
Though we correctly tend to think of 911 as a direct line to life-or-death help, it turns out it’s often the first number called for what could be called an emergency only in a 1950s sitcom. Think lost wallets, illegally parked cars, and loud parties. It’s the default number many call when they are annoyed, regardless of whether they face a real emergency, and someone has to pick up and deal with that call, usually a human dispatcher with a lot of training in getting you help as soon as possible, and at spotting when the call is not an emergency by any stretch of imagination.
At hour 10 of 16, trying to triage four conversations at once, while only one, if even that many, is an emergency, might not be the best use of their energy. Aurelian pitches itself as a solution to that problem, not as a replacement for humans in the position, but as a support service for them.
Aurelian’s answer is to use AI as a dispatcher for dispatchers. If you call 911 and Aurelian answers, it introduces itself as an automated assistant and asks why you’re calling. Loud music complaints, petty theft reports, questions about snow removal, and similar non-emergencies are handled through follow-up questions, completing a report, and routing the information to the appropriate department. If the caller accidentally selects the wrong line or begins describing something that sounds like a genuine emergency, the system transfers the call straight to a human dispatcher.
Since it launched last May, Aurelian claims its system is at the other end of 911 for almost five million people in the U.S. For those areas, Aurelian boasts that it is handling around three-quarters of non-emergency calls, taking up about three hours a day of the kinds of calls emergency dispatchers shouldn’t have to answer.
“911 is in a crisis: severe understaffing and ever-expanding responsibilities have made ECCs overextended and overworked. At Aurelian, our sole purpose is to help them best serve their communities,” Aurelian CEO Max Keenan said in a statement. “911 call-takers are trained to handle emergencies, not parking complaints. Aurelian reduces burnout and helps telecommunicators stay focused on the most critical situations.”
AI emergency
The narrow targeting of AI to solve the very clear problem of too many 911 calls and not enough people to answer them is notable compared to some of the broad plans of other AI developers. The company also just raised $14 million in a funding round to help it scale and to solve the imperfections that any AI system is prone to.
The company also makes a point of trying to ease any guild people might have about an AI service handling a job usually limited to humans. The idea is that AI isn’t replacing emergency workers, but that it can help filter out the calls that the dispatchers aren’t meant to deal with, but that can suck up all their time and energy.
They can save that focus for navigating the emotionally fraught, time-sensitive calls for real emergencies, ones that require empathy, judgment, and decisiveness on their part.
It also changes the public’s experience. When you call in to report something that’s annoying but not urgent, you no longer wait on hold for 45 minutes just to be told to fill out a form. You speak to a voice that can parse your issue and file the right report. And when you are in danger, there’s a better chance someone will pick up faster because they’re not stuck fielding a complaint about a shopping cart left in a driveway. If we’re looking for clues about how AI might actually improve society, maybe this is the shape it takes.
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erichs211@gmail.com (Eric Hal Schwartz)
