Tag: ai

La.: New Orleans 911 turns to AI call triage amid staffing shortages

New Orleans is among the first major American municipalities to integrate an AI voice agent into its 911 emergency call workflow as a limited triage tool.

Overseen by the Orleans Parish Communication District (OPCD), the system — known as AI Emergency Call Triage and powered by software from Carbyne — has been in use on the 911 line since approximately 2023. This is following development work that began around 2022, the department added.

A separate AI agent for the city’s non-emergency 311 service was planned and began rolling out later, around spring 2026.

OPCD reportedly handles more than 1,000 emergency calls per day. The AI tool was designed to reduce workload pressure on human dispatchers during high-volume periods, particularly by filtering redundant reports of the same incident. It functions strictly as a triage layer rather than a replacement for human operators.

Under current protocol, the AI agent activates primarily when all human call-takers are busy and an incoming call originates within roughly 200 meters of a previously reported incident (most commonly a traffic collision). The system asks whether the caller is reporting that known incident.

If the caller confirms they are, the AI can provide reassurance or updates that help is already on the way. If the caller indicates a different or new emergency, or requests a human, the call is immediately routed to an available dispatcher. All calls remain logged and recorded.

OPCD Executive Director Karl Fasold has since defended the limited deployment, noting that 911 centers nationwide face staffing shortages and budget constraints. Filtering duplicate calls during major incidents frees human staff to focus on life-threatening or novel emergencies, he argued.

While other cities, including Atlanta and Seattle, have similarly adopted AI tools for supporting functions such as precise caller location, real-time translation, or dispatcher prompts, New Orleans stands out for using a conversational AI agent that can directly field a narrow subset of active 911 calls under the specific conditions described above.

However, public-safety advocates have voiced growing concern through the media, questioning how well the AI handles panicking callers, heavy accents, ambient noise, or covert distress calls like domestic violence. Critics also cite cybersecurity vulnerabilities and the risk of hallucinated or inaccurate responses during fast-moving crises.

“I was a 911 dispatcher for 11 years and this is the worst idea you could possibly think of,” warned one online critic and alleged former dispatcher. “You have scenarios where the person can’t speak well [or have strong accents] — or if they’re in a domestic situation and they pretend to call for pizza or something — you have to be able to determine how someone feels or pick up on what they aren’t saying.”

Nonetheless, OPCD officials maintain that the tool operates under strict conditions and oversight, has performed reliably in its limited role, with early monitoring showing no false positives or negatives in audited periods, and is not used for other categories of 911 calls.

Keep reading

AI: The Ominous Opportunity

“You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.” — Robert Solow, 1987

The economy has been growing steadily since we started to recover from the 2020 pandemic and shutdown; the unemployment rate is and has been near the bottom of the range normally considered to be full employment; and, wages adjusted for inflation are the highest they’ve ever been. Nevertheless, the productivity slowdown observed by Robert Solow forty years ago seems to have returned, and surveys of consumer confidence are at or near their all-time lows. This essay explores possible reasons for the productivity slowdown and widespread economic uncertainty in the midst of our AI boom.

Measurement Problems

Among the possible explanations of the productivity slowdown or what merely appears to be a productivity slowdown is our limited ability to measure productivity in an economy increasingly dominated by services.

It wasn’t so long ago that productivity was measured in the sectors of the economy concerned with physical output such as agriculture and manufacturing. The productivity of office workers was either ignored or simply subsumed into the productivity of goods-producing companies.

There were problems of measuring quality differences in goods, but these could in theory be surmounted. For example, by comparisons of the prices of old and new vintages of similar products. And, the changing composition of production could be represented by slowly-changing weights in indexes of production.

As much effort as was put into measuring production, systematic discrepancies persist in indexes of the prices of services versus the prices of commodities. The CPI, for example, typically registers a 1 or 2 percentage point higher rate of inflation than the PPI. With the digital economy, now augmented by AI, a serious effort must be made to measure the production of information, entertainment and services. For example, an hour of broadcast time prior to the development of the internet might have cost something like $1 million (in today’s dollars). What about the several hundred thousand hours of video uploaded to YouTube nowadays?

Prototypes (as Opposed to Practical Inventions)

In the past, it took a while for breakthroughs such as the steam engine to have a discernible impact on production. It was more or less a century from prototype steam engines to when steam engines were first put to a practical use (in the refreshing of air in coal mines). Then, several more decades until steam engines were used to run industrial machinery. Then, yet several more decades until steam-powered locomotives were used in transportation.

Even when the steam-powered locomotive was developed, horse-drawn trains were more reliable. The story is told of a race in 1830 between a steam-powered locomotive and a horse-drawn train along the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad from Baltimore to Endicott City. The horse won the race since the locomotive broke down. Nevertheless, over the next century, horses lost their jobs in transportation.

Ditto, the steam-powered hammer. According to folklore, John Henry who—through superhuman effort—beat the steam-powered hammer, preserving jobs for the men of railroad work gangs. Nevertheless, over the next century, men lost their jobs to industrial machinery. Warehousemen who relied on their strength to manhandle barrels of pork, flour, and other produce were replaced by forklifts. Dockworkers lost their jobs to electric-powered derricks.

It is easy, looking back, to see the impact of the Industrial Revolution on productivity, on wages, and on standards of living. But, in real time, it took time for these benefits to accrue. In the meanwhile, workers had to deal with disruptive change.

More recently, in 1996, a super-computer named Deep Blue challenged Gary Kasparov, the world chess champion of the humans. Kasparov won the match 3 games to 1 game to 2 draws. However, the victory was fleeting. A year later, Deep Blue won a rematch; and, nowadays, a decent laptop computer can easily defeat a grandmaster. Today, in the current phase of the Industrial Revolution, computers, robots, and AI are coming after our jobs, not steam-, gasoline- and electric-powered machines.

Keep reading

High-Schoolers in Denmark Will Make Oral Defenses on Assignments To Curb AI Cheating

9,000 students will not cheat.

Everywhere you go, nowadays, you will run into students abusing the AI tools to get good grades.

And the Scandinavian kingdom of Denmark is no exception.

But now, Danish High school students will be required to verbally defend their written assignments, as part of emergency government measures to combat AI cheating.

Politico reported:

“A verbal defense will be needed for all exams written at home, Denmark’s Ministry of Education announced in a statement Thursday, adding that it will work with schools to create the best framework for this.

The rule, which comes into force immediately, applies to students in upper secondary education, which typically begins around age 16. It will include the approximately 9,000 students enrolled in the country’s two-year Higher Preparatory Examination program, who have to submit major written assignments each year, according to the ministry.”

High Schools will also use a firewall to keep students from accessing content to get an advantage.

“In addition, it is encouraging schools to get students to complete more assignments in school, under controlled environments, to make supervision easier.

‘Unfortunately, we have a problem with students using AI to cheat in upper secondary school’, Education Minister Magnus Heunicke said in the statement. ‘Action is needed now, and we are starting with these three initiatives’.”

Keep reading

Flock Camera Mix-Up: Wisconsin Woman Pulled Over Twice at Gunpoint Due to Error

A Wisconsin woman was pulled over at gunpoint twice in one week after Milwaukee Police Department staff failed to remove a vehicle alert from the Flock license plate camera system.

Fox 6 Milwaukee reports that on Thursday, police in the Milwaukee suburb of Brookfield, Wisconsin, conducted a high-risk traffic stop on Interstate 94 after a Flock camera flagged a vehicle in connection with a Milwaukee homicide investigation. Video footage from the incident shows multiple officers with weapons drawn and a passenger extending their hands out the car window in compliance with police commands.

The vehicle’s driver, Amber Newell, and her passengers were detained during the stop. However, when Brookfield Police contacted the Milwaukee Police Department to coordinate the arrest, MPD informed them they no longer needed the vehicle or its occupants. The officers immediately released Newell and the other individuals.

According to the Milwaukee Police Department, the incident resulted from a personnel error rather than a technological malfunction. MPD staff had failed to remove the wanted vehicle alert from the Flock system after the investigation no longer required monitoring that particular car. Brookfield Police Chief Christopher Garcia stated that his officers’ actions were consistent with the information available to them at the time of the stop.

In an interview with FOX6 News, Newell described the emotional impact of the experience. “I haven’t been asleep since this has happened,” Newell said. “Every time I close my eyes, all I can see is guns.” Newell recounted the terrifying moments when police surrounded her vehicle. “My momma is like my go-to person, I wanted to call her so bad yesterday, but I’m like, if I make a sudden move, it’s gonna be over, it’s going to end my life,” Newell said.

What makes the situation even more disturbing for Newell is that this was not an isolated incident. She reported that Milwaukee police conducted a similar stop on Monday, also with guns drawn. According to Newell, officers provided no explanation, towed her vehicle, and released her without charges.

“It was very embarrassing because after they put us in cuffs, they walked us to the car, I don’t know what’s going on, I’m scared, all you see is people in they cars recording,” Newell said.

Milwaukee police declined to provide an interview regarding the incident. The department emphasized the error was related to data entry procedures rather than the Flock camera technology itself, but has not publicly addressed how similar mistakes might be prevented in the future.

Keep reading

Country’s biggest teachers’ unions efforts to get DEI into AI for schools K-12 sparks backlash

he country’s two biggest teachers unions are working to get diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) ideology into artificial intelligence models before they are used in grades K-12, sparking backlash from at least one education and parental rights advocacy group.

The unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, essentially say they are making such efforts, including becoming involved in the process at state-level education departments, to mitigate AI models’ “algorithmic bias.” 

The term is essentially defined as AI-generated results that are incorrect, unfair or prejudiced as a result, in part, of the prejudices, whether blind or intentional, of the model creators, typically white or Asian men.  

Such efforts were flagged in a recent report by Defending Education, a national conservative and right-of-center grassroots advocacy organization.

“Within the next few years, most K-12 schools and colleges will integrate AI into their curricula … helping students with research assignments and even creating specialized feedback for each student,” says the group before warning, “The problem is that unions, left-wing activists, and groups in the education field are already setting the foundation to use these AI tools to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives to students during their formative years.”

While the group singles out the country’s two most powerful teachers’ unions, it cites similars efforts by such groups, associations and organizations as:

  • The California Teachers Association assisting the California Department of Education in creating guidance for K-12 schools with language advocating for “educators to approach AI with an equity lens.”
  • The American Association of School Administrators promoting the idea that “white males” are a problem in the creation of AI.

“The goal of these groups is to implement DEI ideology into AI before it can be fully integrated into America’s education system,” Defending Education continued. “If DEI is embedded in AI before schools adopt these new tools, then DEI, as part of AI, becomes institutionalized in the nation’s schools once the tools are adopted.”

Neither the AFT nor NEA responded to a request for comment.

Keep reading

We’re Being Plunged Into Dystopia When We Could Be Living In Paradise

It’s funny the things that get to you when you’ve been at this for a while. 

Today the thing that smacked me upside the head and made me lay my face in my hands for a minute was a viral video clip of Canadian politician Bill Oliver accidentally reading out text from the AI chatbot which had authored his speech before the New Brunswick legislature.

“Public confidence in the office of an advocate matters,” Oliver said while reading from his prepared statement, before blurting out “Here’s a more natural, flowing version of that section that reads like a legislative speech rather than a series of short points.”

I mean, damn dude.

I can’t get over how this is the future we wound up in. Things could have been so beautiful, and instead we wound up with this.

Keep reading

Pelosi Slams Dem Trying to Replace Her in House for ‘Sexist’ Campaign Chatbot

Watching the woke eat their own is an entertaining sideshow — and while it’s unfortunate when it won’t end up benefiting a Republican, at least we can take heart that Nancy Pelosi will go out slamming a thoroughly woke gay man who’s poised to replace her in Congress.

California state Sen. Scott Wiener is locked in a two-Democrat race with San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan to replace the retiring Rep. Pelosi (or, as other Democrats love to refer to her, “Speaker Emerita Pelosi”). Wiener was first in the jungle primary in June, but given that the top two advance and second place was Chan, it’s woke vs. woke, and Pelosi has endorsed Chan’s version.

Part of Wiener’s problem in a heavily Democratic district is that he’s Jewish and won’t call Israel’s war against the terrorist group Hamas a “genocide,” which means that anti-Semitism has reared its ugly head. In addition to Pelosi’s endorsement, the San Francisco online news outlet Mission Local reported that third-place finisher Saikat Chakrabarti endorsed Chan as well, and he “shares a progressive-leaning voter base with Chan.”

Polls show the race as close; while both are crazy in their own way, Wiener tends more toward the culturally woke, trans-the-kids side, while Chan tends toward the anti-development, defund-the-police woke side. It’s like a reverse “Sophie’s Choice” — you have to keep one.

And, as in any campaign between wokeistas, there are going to be intersecting claims of prejudice. To that end, we have the rich irony of Wiener getting accused of sexism, in a letter reported by Politico, for launching a chatbot that chronicles his opponent’s foibles.

“Women have spent generations fighting to have our own voices heard in the halls of power,” Pelosi wrote in the letter, which was signed by several other female Democrats.

“We should not have to fight against artificial intelligence putting words in our mouths.”

Keep reading

Scientists Warn Of Urgent AI Biosecurity Threat

For the first time, artificial intelligence has designed complete, functional viral genomes from scratch.

Oh dear.

Stanford University and Arc Institute researchers used generative AI models to produce 16 novel bacteriophages that successfully infect and kill bacteria in the lab.

Officials insist the viruses “pose no threat to people,” yet biosecurity experts are already sounding the alarm that the same technology opens the door to inventing dangerous pathogens.

The breakthrough, published in the journal Science, marks the first time generative AI has written entire viable viral genomes.

Researchers trained genome language models known as Evo 1 and Evo 2 on millions of natural genetic sequences. They then tasked the systems with designing complete bacteriophage genomes based on the well-studied ?X174 template that infects E. coli.

Of 302 synthesized designs, 16 proved fully functional: they assembled into virus particles, replicated inside bacterial cells, and in some cases outperformed the natural virus, even overcoming bacterial resistance when used as a cocktail.

Oh dear.

Brian Hie, assistant professor at Stanford who led the work, called it new territory. “This is a next step in the complexity that’s designable by generative AI, this is the first time generative AI has been used to design a complete genome, it’s something that can replicate and have other functions inside cells… this was new territory for us,” he told the BBC.

The team deliberately excluded genetic data from viruses capable of infecting complex organisms and conducted the work in a secure laboratory. The resulting phages target only specific bacteria.

Patrick Cai, a synthetic biologist at the University of Manchester not involved in the study, called it “an important milestone.”

Yet the same experts who celebrate the medical potential for phage therapies against antibiotic-resistant infections are issuing blunt warnings.

In an accompanying commentary in Science, Dr. Thomas Inglesby and Dr. Moritz Hanke of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security wrote that the findings raise “urgent biosafety and biosecurity questions.”

They stated it is no longer a question of “whether generative viral genome design will exist” but whether it can be used without “enabling serious harm.”

Oh dear.

Keep reading

DeepSeek Resumes $74BN Mega-Raise – Then Warns It’s Jacking-Up Prices

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek is looking to raise roughly 50 billion yuan at a valuation of 500 billion yuan (US$74 billion) – while the company warned developers a day later that it’s raising prices. The resumed funding round, first reported by Chinese business outlet Caijing (via The Standard), is expected to be signed by the end of the month, with the process kept deliberately quiet; some participating institutions reportedly haven’t even been formally told the deal is back on. The pricing notice, posted Thursday to DeepSeek’s developer platform, warns that API rates will rise across the board and that the increase is expected to be “significant.”

The round restarts barely two weeks after it was shelved, and roughly six weeks after DeepSeek’s first-ever external raise in June, which pulled in some $7.4 billion from Tencent, CATL, Beijing’s National AI Industry Investment Fund, NetEase, JD.com, Monolith Management and IDG Capital at a valuation north of $50 billion (corporate filings later implied a figure closer to $52 billion). The new target is a steep markup on a deal that closed weeks ago, and the prospective investor list reportedly blends returning backers with new money that couldn’t get into round one.

As we noted last month, the round stalled because a transcript of founder Liang Wenfeng’s May 20 closed-door meeting with investors leaked onto GitHub and went viral – a document in which Liang admitted China still trails the US in AI (a gap of compute and capital, not talent, per Liang), conceded DeepSeek remains heavily dependent on Nvidia hardware, described Huawei’s substitutes as falling well short, and acknowledged the company could get its hands on processors he called “noncompliant.” 

Liang – reportedly furious over the leak – simply froze the deal.

Meanwhile, questions about how DeepSeek is obtaining restricted silicon go back to the very beginning – with federal investigators probing whether Singapore-based third parties funneled blacklisted Nvidia chips to the lab as far back as early 2025, and by that April the House Select Committee on the CCP had formally concluded that DeepSeek’s model appeared to run on tens of thousands of export-restricted Nvidia chips, branding the company a tool for “subverting” US export controls. Congress alleged it and now the founder has all but confirmed it, on (leaked) record telling investors the workaround exists – even as the company lays groundwork for a Shanghai STAR Market IPO it reportedly hopes to file this year. Should be a fun prospectus to read. 

Liang was able to hit the pause button so easily because DeepSeek’s first round routed nearly every investor’s money into a limited partnership Liang personally controls, complete with a five-year lock-up and zero voting rights. The lone exception was the state AI fund, which bought direct equity and kept its vote. Liang holds roughly 84% of the company and near-total voting control – meaning Tencent and CATL wired in billions for the privilege of watching, while Beijing holds the only outside seat at the table.

In the leaked transcript, he told investors that GPUs are the single best use of the company’s capital, that he would happily convert the entire war chest into Nvidia hardware if supply allowed, and that spending 20 billion yuan a year on processors would count as a triumph for his purchasing team. He also told them the money doesn’t go as far as it looks: even 50 billion yuan, he said, wouldn’t train a model at the scale of the largest U.S. systems, which he estimated would take roughly 50,000 Nvidia GB300s or 200,000 Huawei Ascend 950s – before the experiments that precede any final training run. Beyond the hardware, the company plans to double headcount and push into data centers and AI agents, and Reuters reports it is quietly hiring chip designers to develop in-house inference silicon – an attempt to engineer its way out of the very dependence Liang lamented.

Keep reading

White House Moves to Accelerate AI Data Center Development on Federal Lands

The Trump administration has issued executive orders intended to accelerate the development of artificial intelligence data centers, including on federal lands, according to administration officials. The orders are designed to address rising electricity demand from AI computing and to strengthen U.S. competitiveness, the White House said. Data centers currently consume about 4.4 percent of total U.S. electricity, a figure projected to reach 12 percent by 2030, according to industry estimates cited by the White House. [11]

Executive Orders Direct Agencies to Open Federal Lands

The executive orders direct the Departments of Energy and the Interior to identify federal parcels for data center leases and to designate projects as priority infrastructure, according to the administration. Agencies have been instructed to expedite permitting and coordinate transmission connections, officials said. The Bureau of Land Management has already approved the Townsite Data Center project to construct, operate, and maintain a data center on 88.5 acres of public land, Sen. Edward Markey (D-MA) said on Facebook, accusing the administration of approving the “first private data center on public land using a permit meant for a solar project.” [10]

A report by Children’s Health Defense, “Cheating the System,” details how developers have exploited legal loopholes following a May 2023 Supreme Court ruling that limited Clean Water Act jurisdiction, leaving many data centers outside Environmental Protection Agency oversight or eligible for streamlined nationwide permits that require minimal review. [12]

Power Demand Drives Energy Infrastructure Plans

Officials said the data centers will require electricity from natural gas, nuclear, and geothermal sources, along with expanded high-voltage transmission capacity. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum warned the Senate that the U.S. risks losing the global AI race to China unless it prioritizes reliable, baseload electricity generation, primarily from fossil fuels, to meet the energy demands of AI and data centers. [5] In its quest for more electric power, AI data centers are forming partnerships with nuclear power providers, with utilities owning about a third of U.S. nuclear power plants in discussions with AI centers about long-term electricity supply, according to the Trends Journal. [6]

The rapid buildout raises questions about grid reliability, water consumption, and environmental impacts on previously undisturbed federal lands. Local officials across the United States say rapid construction of data centers is creating environmental and infrastructure concerns, according to NaturalNews.com. [4] The backlash against AI data centers is intensifying across America, driven by growing awareness that these facilities are escalating electricity costs and displacing resources essential for human life, including water, farmland, and energy, according to BrightVideos.com. [14] According to U.S. Labor Department data cited in the Trends Journal, electricity bills are up more than 10 percent and homeowners’ insurance is up 13 percent over the past two years. [7]

Supporters Cite Competition; Critics Raise Concerns

Administration officials and industry representatives said the buildout is necessary for U.S. leadership in AI and for national security. State lawmakers and big tech are pushing back against what they call misinformation surrounding data centers, arguing that the facilities are vital for American jobs and technological leadership, according to Just the News. [9] Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in Senate testimony that without reliable baseload power, the United States risks falling behind China in the AI race. [5]

Opposition has also organized. More than 300 cities, towns, and counties have enacted bans or moratoriums on hyperscale construction, according to a count by The Information, and a poll cited by NBC News found 58 percent oppose local data centers. [8] Environmental groups and local residents have objected to land use and emissions, while public health advocates have cited concerns about noise and light pollution, according to BrightVideos.com. [14]

Keep reading