Technology to be used ?€?in times of congestion?€?
Artificial intelligence based on ChatGPT technology will manage the answering of 112 emergency calls from 2025 onwards in times of congestion, the deputy secretary-general of the Internal Administration (MAI), Ant??nio Pombeiro, told reporters today.
?€?In principle, if the pilot goes well, we are prepared, from 2025, to start using?€? this system to answer calls, said Pombeiro on the sidelines of MAI Tech, a technology conference in the areas of security and civil protection, organised by the Ministry of Internal Administration in Porto.
The government official conceded this is ?€?a very recent technology?€?, with the ?€?need to do many tests?€?, admitting that for now ?€?we are very much in the unknown?€?.
?€?In certain situations we have waiting periods motivated by call congestion, when there are incidents or events that involve a lot of publicity, a lot of people visualising what is happening, everyone has the initiative to call 112?€?, he explained, giving the example of urban fires.
As resources are ?€?dimensioned for normal situations?€?, periods of call congestion can mean it ?€?can reach five or six minutes?€? before people hear a voice at the end of the line (ie hardly an emergency response). The idea is to ?€?create a first interface that answers the call, evaluates what kind of problem it relates to and what kind of report?€? is needed, but with ?€?an answer in natural language?€?.
According to Pombeiro, ?€?the caller will not realise that he/ she is talking to a system, to a machine, to a robot?€?, which will ?€?use the new ChatGPT technology?€?, which is still undergoing a period of testing with simulated calls.
?€?The second party always has to be a human?€?, he assured. ?€?The system (that is, the robot) never takes the call to the end (and will only work) ?€?in times of greater congestion?€?.
Questioned as to whether the long term plan is to gradually replace people from the ?€?112?€? network, the deputy secretary-general rejected this scenario, saying that the development involves ?€?strengthening operational means?€?. It is ?€?always necessary to have a human in the background?€?, he said.
As for false/ prank calls ?€? which are around 60%, ?€?a very high number?€? ?€? these too will need to be factored into the ?€?different learning?€?, but they do constitute ?€?a goal?€? of the new project. (In other words, robots will be programmed to sift out prank/ false emergencies?€?)
Source material: LUSA