Anoka County 911 center testing AI to screen nonemergency calls, ease workload
How 911 dispatchers are using AI to handle nonemergency calls on busy nights
How 911 dispatchers are using AI to handle nonemergency calls on busy nights
Skies will be lighting up with fireworks on Friday, but so will 911 lines. Emergency response dispatchers face a flood of calls on the fourth.
On average, about 1,900 calls come into the c Facility (ECF) in Plymouth. Officials say that number spikes on July Fourth. In 2021, over 2,700 calls came in 24 hours.
"The Fourth of July is probably our busiest holiday we see," said Tony Martin, Director of Emergency Communications at Hennepin County Sheriff's Office.
Martin says local 911 centers are overloaded, the surge largely due to an uptick in nonemergency fireworks complaints, meaning one less dispatcher available to answer a call for a crime in progress, a medical emergency or a fire.
"We would ask people to call our nonemergency number if you need to call in fireworks complaints," Martin said.
As the calls start to roll in on the Fourth of July weekend, Anoka County's 911 center is tapping into an artificial intelligence system to screen nonemergency calls to ease the workload and get to more calls.
The call will be transferred to the automated system to collect details before sending it back to the dispatcher to send to the appropriate agency.
"You can't take the human out of 911, but if we are also going to be here, we need to be more available for the emergencies," said Kari Morrissey with Anoka County Emergency Communications Center.
Morrissey says this new system is being rolled out this holiday weekend to test how well it works before the full rollout to use AI during major holidays.
"It's going to save us, we think about two to three minutes per call, and will free up dispatchers to get to those priority calls," Morrissey said.
Saving critical time, when every second counts.
In Minneapolis, residents can call 311 for noise complaints.
In Anoka County, the non-emergency number is 763-427-1212.
In Hennepin County, the non-emergency number is 952-258-5321.
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33 minutes ago
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In 2024 security report on DeepSeek, the House Select Committee on China recommended 'remote access controls' on all data centers. A bill from Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) to extend export controls to the cloud, and block 'CCP-aligned companies' from accessing U.S. technology remotely, advanced out of the House Foreign Affairs Committee in April. 'Closing this loophole is essential to preventing our adversaries like China from accessing restricted technology,' Lawler's communications director Ciro Riccardi told DFD. There's a tension embedded into the cloud computing question. Some Chinese customers use U.S. cloud services for innocuous purposes, like storage or video games, rather than military or AI development – and that can be a good thing, said Sam Winter-Levy, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 'So long as the world's AI computing activities stay tethered to the U.S. cloud, policymakers can bake some degree of transparency into the system,' he said. 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The Trump administration has cheered on these ventures, including their implications for cloud computing. 'American companies will operate the data centers and offer American-managed cloud services throughout the region,' Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said in a statement. 'These are America First deals that drive investment into the U.S., improve our trade balance, and lock in American technology as the global standard,' White House AI and crypto czar David Sacks wrote in a May post on X. Critics including House China Chair John Moolenaar (R-Mich.) called for scrutiny of the deals, especially in light of Gulf countries' alliances with China. But it's unclear what guardrails exist on the deals, for the chips themselves or the data centers they will power. When asked about the security of the Gulf data centers, the White House pointed DFD to a fact sheet stating that agreements in the UAE include 'strong protections to prevent the diversion of U.S.-origin technology.' Amazon and Microsoft have also inked deals to help those Middle Eastern companies develop their cloud services. Asked about their cloud security measures for those Gulf projects, Amazon said 'AWS complies with all applicable U.S. laws, including trade laws.' Microsoft pointed DFD to a press release stating that its UAE partnership includes a commitment 'to world-leading standards in AI safety and security.' Chris Miller, a Tufts University semiconductor historian and author of 'Chip War,' said the current approach leaves Big Tech companies largely responsible for policing who uses their cloud services, especially when it comes to the data centers planned for the Middle East. 'Different countries and governments have different interests,' Miller said. 'This seems to me to be just as important, if not more important, as where physically the chips and servers are.' EU firms want an AI moratorium too European companies are pushing for a pause on AI regulations, and what they're asking sounds an awful lot like the failed effort backed by Silicon Valley to pause state AI law enforcement in the megabill. As POLITICO's Eliza Gkritsi reports, 46 leaders of the European Union's biggest firms – including Airbus, Mistral, and Mercedes-Benz – sent an open letter Thursday asking Brussels for a two-year delay on implementing its AI Act, which is set to go into effect on Aug. 2. They complain of 'unclear, overlapping and increasingly complex EU regulations' as being a major obstacle to scaling AI systems and competing on a global level. The pause would allow for 'further simplification of the new rules,' they said. The AI Act, which the EU passed last year, includes an overarching set of rules regulating AI systems like chatbots and facial recognition. Those rules include transparency requirements, restrictions on AI-powered surveillance, and a ban on biometric systems that classify peoples' protected characteristics like race. Companies like Meta and Google have criticized the AI Act as unworkable. Henna Virkkunen, the EU's technology chief, told POLITICO that she would decide by the end of August whether to delay enactment of the legislation. THE KOSA POWER PLAY THAT SANK THE AI MORATORIUM At the center of Sen. Marsha Blackburn's decision this week to withdraw support for an artificial intelligence measure she worked on with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) was her Kids Online Safety Act, according to four people familiar with the situation, POLITICO's Ruth Reader and Mohar Chatterjee report. Those four people, granted anonymity to discuss private negotiations, said Blackburn (R-Tenn.) hoped a compromise to limit the scope and span of the 10-year AI moratorium would allow her to advance her KOSA legislation to markup in the Senate Commerce Committee, which Cruz chairs. The amendment she worked out with Cruz would have allowed states to enforce laws passed in recent years to keep kids safe from online sexual predators, bullying, drug sales and other negative health impacts, but it prevented states from putting 'undue or disproportionate burden' on AI systems. After a coalition of 130 organizations said they opposed that amendment, Blackburn went to Cruz on Monday and tried to get the 'undue or disproportionate burden' language removed from the bill. But Cruz wouldn't budge, one of the people said. By Monday night, Blackburn changed her amendment with Cruz to include KOSA as a symbolic move, three of the people said. She then partnered with Senate Commerce ranking member Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) to strike the original AI moratorium from the megabill, which lawmakers approved with a 99-1 vote. Cruz's office didn't return a request for comment, and Blackburn's office declined to comment. post of the day THE FUTURE IN 5 LINKS
