SUMMIT COUNTY, Ohio — Back in June, News 5 first told you how artificial intelligence is answering phones at the Summit Emergency Communications Center.
RELATED: Hundreds of calls in minutes? AVA the AI has it covered
Now, AI is listening to those emergency calls and helping dispatchers in real time.
"It’s a tool to help us so that we can get help to the citizens faster and that we can get more efficient information to our first responders,” said Summit Emergency Communications Center Deputy Director of Administration, Samantha Fickes.
When News 5 reintroduced you to AVA in June, we also learned the artificial intelligence agent has a better sister named CORA, who just started in May and is like AVA.
Only CORA doesn’t help answer non-emergency calls in Summit County.
Fickes said CORA’s job is to be a second set of ears for her dispatch team when they are on active calls.
"CORA will populate questions that we as an agency would ask," said Fickes.
That way, Fickes said, dispatchers don’t forget to gather key information thanks to CORA’s help to highlight and summarize those important questions during emergency and non-emergency calls.
"Maybe a caller will start talking about one thing, and we as a dispatcher maybe don’t realize or forgot to ask a question,” said Fickes.
News 5 asked if there have been instances where CORA didn’t get it all the way right.
"Not that I’m aware of, honestly,” said Fickes. “This is actually something that has been really widely accepted in dispatch.”
Even Case Western Reserve University Associate Professor of Computer Science, Erman Ayday, sees how AI is helping emergency communications centers better serve the community. He also reassures the public that it’s there to help.
"They need to also understand that AI is not the decision maker. AI is not there to make the process longer. AI is there to make the process actually much more efficient,” said Ayday.
Still, Max Keenan, CEO of the Seattle-based company, Aurelian, that designed AVA and CORA, said there’s always room for improvement, especially when it comes to building the community’s trust with new AI tools.
"I think you should have fears. It’s changing very quickly, and I think it’s on us to be incredibly intentional about what we’re doing and why we’re doing it and how we’re doing it to make sure that we’re actually getting the outcomes that we deserve,” said Keenan.
As AI continues to evolve, Fickes hopes to get CORA for radio traffic to pick up communication between dispatch callers and first responders within the Summit Emergency Communications Center.
"Believe me, we are still in the crawling stages, and this is going to go much different in the next 5 or 10 years,” said Ayday.
