The city of Long Beach will soon be using artificial intelligence to review 911 calls as part of a first-of-its-kind program, and officials assure it’s not meant to replace jobs.<\/p>\n
The city receives approximately 600,000 911 calls every year.<\/p>\n
According to national standards, at least 2% of those calls should be reviewed annually for quality assurance. That comes out to 12,000 calls in Long Beach.<\/p>\n
Before, supervisors were tasked with manually reviewing them, which is why the city believes AI can help.<\/p>\n
“With this AI tool, we’re actually able to review 100% of the calls,” said Reginald Harrison, Director of the City of Long Beach’s Department of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Communications.<\/p>\n
The program is called CommsCoach AI and was developed by a company called GovWorx.<\/p>\n
The company says around 250 other 911 call centers across the country – including in California – currently use the technology. It currently has a $68,000-a-year contract with GovWorx until February 2028.<\/p>\n
Harrison said the program will review emergency calls and assign a score to every call, rating how the dispatcher handled it.<\/p>\n
Dispatchers will be assessed on their professionalism, tone, follow-up questions and judgment.<\/p>\n
Each call will be part of an employee’s overall evaluation status. Harrison said most dispatchers were not surprised by the technology’s introduction.<\/p>\n
“I think the dispatchers that have kept up with the industry are not surprised because we’ve seen across the country other call centers using AI in a number of different ways,” he said.<\/p>\n
Supervisors previously tasked with assessing the calls will now review the ones that are flagged by the program and provide coaching.<\/p>\n
Harrison guarantees that the goal is to get better, not to replace jobs.<\/p>\n
“AI will not replace dispatchers. AI will not take calls. AI will not replace human judgment,” said Harrison.<\/p>\n
He said the city spent months working to address privacy concerns.<\/p>\n
The program is preparing to store sensitive personal data, including names, addresses and health information.<\/p>\n
The city’s data security team vetted the software thoroughly to ensure it follows city guidelines, as well as HIPAA and other mandates.<\/p>\n
“The information that AI is listening to stays within the city’s secure data system does not leave the City of Long Beach,” said Harrison.<\/p>\n
The program is currently in a pilot phase, and officials hope to launch it as soon as possible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The city of Long Beach will soon be using artificial intelligence to review 911 calls as part of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":189219,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[35942,131,133,132,88865],"class_list":{"0":"post-189218","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-long-beach","8":"tag-911-calls","9":"tag-long-beach","10":"tag-long-beach-headlines","11":"tag-long-beach-news","12":"tag-reginald-harrison"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}