this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2026
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That is the thought process of a child. If your defense of something with obvious issues is “Well I’m sure they know what they’re doing, because if they didn’t it would be bad”, I have some really, really bad news for you about the world.
If this was thought through by a capable adult, it would’t be implemented at all. The very fact that this solution is on the table is proof of the breakdown of rational thought. Or more likely, greased palms.
Your blind appeal to authority would hold more water if we haven’t already seen national adoption of AI products in emergency services that that have catastrophically failed to perform their basic functions, leading to real world harm. Audits of Flock cameras deployed in several cities found an error rate ranging from 33-70%. People are being arrested for things they didn’t do because the AI doesn’t work and nobody cares. People are being stalked because nobody thought of basic security controls.
Even worse, we’re talking about an AI implementation of if…else statements. Regular if else statements are consistent. As soon as you throw AI into the mix they become unpredictable. You introduce a failure mode that didn’t exist before that can and will have real consequences.
Yeah it's definitely better to not answer all those calls
So... you do assume that you're the first to think of this problem, or...?
If you assume that your brain is somehow superior[^1] to everyone involved in the R&D, engineering, data analysts/QC, etc., then this may come as a surprise to you: You're not even the first Lemmy commenter to think of it.
Literally multiple people here already thought about that and commented before you did. They're not the first either; the author of the article herself even thought about it.
This idea is among the most obvious potential problems that come to mind within seconds or minutes of just hearing about the concept. It's not a dumb idea by any means (it's completely valid), it's just not a particularly smart or special one.
911 is not the first department in that city[^2] to use this tech, and that city isn't even the first to adopt it. It's silly to assume that such an easy-to-solve problem hasn't been addressed by now, or that it somehow has not yet happened in other deployments.
[^1]: To be clear: I make no assumptions that your brain is not superior to theirs either – I couldn't possibly know either way. AFAIK, I've never even met you nor them... But I think it would be a safe bet that you don't know either.
[^2]: BTW, have you heard cajun accents? There's no way this bridge hasn't already been crossed during their 311 trials.
As someone who worked in the industry, your trust is wildly misplaced. I guarantee someone has already said internally this will not work and was shushed by a sales manager.
And as far as "I am sure they tested accents" goes? HA they likely noted it was a mess and moved on. You think the goal is a functioning system, but it is not it is just to make the sale.