Dakota County turning to AI to answer non-emergency calls

At the Dakota 911 dispatch center, dispatchers are fielding 80 to 100 calls per hour. About 40 percent of those are non-emergencies, like a noise complaint or vandalism. But now, instead of a dispatcher answering non-emergency calls, an AI assistant is.

“It's about redirecting those non-emergency calls elsewhere so that we can focus on the emergency activity,” said Dakota 911 executive director Heidi Hieserich.

Hieserich told Minnesota Now host Nina Moini that Dakota 911 is understaffed, a situation many 911 dispatch centers are facing.

Dakota 911 deployed the project in October, becoming one of the first in the Twin Cities metro to use this kind of technology. Hieserich said the technology has already made a difference, with a reduction of 35 to 40 percent of non-emergency calls coming through to the 911 center.

“It really lightens the load just a little bit,” said Hieserich. “Just to try to allow our telecommunicators to focus on the real critical activity that they're trained for.”

The AI assistant is similar to a call to a pharmacy or customer service line. It can route you to other agencies or resources, like the jail or the records department. For many calls, it directs callers to an online request form that gets texted to their phone. For people where an online form may be difficult to use, callers can talk still talk to a dispatcher.

Prior to the AI system, when people called the non-emergency line they may have been put on a several minute wait, due to low staffing and more emergent calls taking priority. Now with the AI answering, people no longer have to wait to get routed to the resource they need.

Dakota 911 has been going into the back end of the system daily to make tweaks to help the AI work better and meet people’s needs. So far, the feedback has been mostly positive from residents.

Hieserich doesn’t worry about AI replacing dispatchers.

“We need humans doing this job,” she said. Though Dakota 911 is experimenting with other AI technology for training and employee development.

Listen to the full conversation with Nina Moini with the audio player above.