UK Police To Trial AI 'Agents' Responding To Non-Emergency Calls (bbc.com) 52
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Call-handling agents powered by AI are to be trialled by Staffordshire Police in a bid to cut waiting times for the non-emergency 101 service. The force is set to become the third in the country to take part in the scheme testing the use of artificial "agents" to deal with calls. Under the system, the AI agent would deal with simple queries like requests for information without the need for human involvement, freeing up call handlers and reducing answering times.
Acting Chief Constable Becky Riggs confirmed the force would be looking to launch the AI pilot early in the new year. "It's a piece of technology called Agentforce. It will help with our response to the public, which historically we know we haven't done well." The senior officer said that sometimes people are not calling to report a crime, but want more information, which the technology could help with. However, if the system detects keywords suggesting vulnerability or risk or emergency, then it will be able to divert the call to a human being.
Acting Chief Constable Becky Riggs confirmed the force would be looking to launch the AI pilot early in the new year. "It's a piece of technology called Agentforce. It will help with our response to the public, which historically we know we haven't done well." The senior officer said that sometimes people are not calling to report a crime, but want more information, which the technology could help with. However, if the system detects keywords suggesting vulnerability or risk or emergency, then it will be able to divert the call to a human being.
UK arrests 30 people a day for speech (Score:5, Insightful)
A significant portion of /. posts on any political topic would get you arrested in UK. Because of that, I don't think UK qualifies as a Western Democracy anymore.
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But at least you can get curry now. :/ The sun as truly set on the British Empire. Same with France, Germany, and heck, even Japan is starting to notice diversity is not a strength. When was the last time a general said "We need a DIVERSIFIED front".. Even parents are told they need to be unified.
Seriously, the social fabric of the entire country is ruined, but the food is great!
That's the sort of comment that would get you a knock at the door at 6AM in the UK and Germany.
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If you have a "diverse" group than an inherent part of diversity is that some of the group will disagree with diversity and even be hostile to the greater good of the group.
There are many who perceive countries that welcome immigrants to be gullible idiots that they can take advantage of, and will take advantage while it's beneficial to them and then quickly abandon that country if it's no longer to their advantage.
So you can only benefit from limited diversity, the members of the group must still have comm
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"There are many who perceive countries that welcome immigrants to be gullible idiots that they can take advantage of"
And they'd be correct.
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There is no group if the members are "diverse". If you try to create a "diverse" group you end up with multiple groups forced together who disagree about what the group is and what it's going to be doing.
Which is largely what you see in the UK, where the different types of "diversity" are creating their own enclaves where they don't have to interact with each other. Except the government takes money from one group and gives it to all the others.
This inevitably leads to breakdown and collapse.
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"Japan is starting to notice diversity is not a strength"
Japan never fell for that multi culti BS propaganda in the first place. Its a very racially homogenous country and all the better for it.
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Japan never fell for that multi culti BS propaganda in the first place. Its a very racially homogenous country and all the better for it.
Three notes about your comment:
1) Culture and race are far from synonymous, therefore multiculturalism has no inherent connection to do with racial homogeneity.
2) The fortunes of the United States were founded upon the slave trade. That means that its racial diversity - and at least a small slice of whatever cultural diversity it has - are what Made America Great before a bunch of fucktards tacked on the "Again" and spoiled it for everyone.
3) Food is a component of culture, so if you've ever eaten dis
Re: UK arrests 30 people a day for speech (Score:2)
Multiculturalism is having people of different cultures living in the same area. Its not fucking restaurant food. Go get yourself a clue.
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Well, if the restaurateurs live in the same area you live in...
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Just so we're clear, they have more arrests for speech, expressed opinions and unexpressed opinions (failure to visibly express a correct opinion in certain settings, i.e. people getting arrested for silently standing alone next to abortion clinics doing absolutely nothing but) than Russia and China for these kinds of offenses COMBINED.
Oh wait, that was previous decade. 2023 numbers suggests it was over five times combined China and Russia, and UK trend is upwards.
Most recent reporting suggests that UK may
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UK is self evidently not a liberal democracy (which I assume is what you refer to when you call it "Western Democracy").
UK have fallen. Freedom of speech is foundational principle. More so, what actually happening in UK is very one-sided and weaponized against opponents of UK government and its policies. They are not arresting people for calling Nigel Farage a nazi or threatening Brexit supporters with violence.
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Only when little are against right wing policies.
When people are attacking from the right, e.g. immigrant haters and farmers opposed to tax, the government is very very light touch.
Farage is busy inciting race riots where convicted domestic abusers attack the police and they're are hardly any arrests. But against hold up the wrong cardboard sign...
Re:UK arrests 30 people a day for speech (Score:4, Insightful)
Just so we're clear, they have more arrests for speech, expressed opinions and unexpressed opinions (failure to visibly express a correct opinion in certain settings, i.e. people getting arrested for silently standing alone next to abortion clinics doing absolutely nothing but) than Russia and China for these kinds of offenses COMBINED.
Oh wait, that was previous decade. 2023 numbers suggests it was over five times combined China and Russia, and UK trend is upwards.
Most recent reporting suggests that UK may have climbed to having over 100 times arrests than China for free speech related offenses alone.
Not per capita. Arrests in total. Those two have a combined population that's over twenty times that of UK.
Not to stand up for the UK - which seems to be attempting to emulate 1984, just 40 years too late - but trying to show Russia and China as shining beacons of free speech isn't a very good comparison. Vladimir doesn't always arrest people who dare to speak, sometimes they just fall out of windows onto the street. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org].
I take it that death for saying the wrong thing isn't what you advocate for?
But to the topic at hand, a 911 system based on AI instead of actual intelligence AKA a human deciding what the problem is and responding correctly - well that AI system is a bucket of suck. It is the opposite of what those systems are supposed to do. People will die.
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While the whole "GRU/KGB dealt with it" aspect is real, it's so rare that it makes headlines every time. It's also worth noting that this is rarely if ever for "speech" reasons. Most of it is standard Russian Mafia style "you got our money/you betrayed loyalty" internal fighting. It doesn't really concern general public. They just don't rank high enough to warrant that level of attention.
It's the same thing how Chinese billionaires occasionally vanish for "re-education". Not really relevant for general publ
Re: UK arrests 30 people a day for speech (Score:2)
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I don't think UK qualifies as a Western Democracy anymore.
It's historically a representative democracy, but the representation has been corrupted by outside influence, including political parties,
and has thus fallen to despotism.
Re: UK arrests 30 people a day for speech (Score:2)
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A significant portion of /. posts
Only when you include ACs. People aren't being arrested for stupidity. They are being arrested for truly obscene shit and death threats. I'm not sure if you've seen the internet, but believe me Slashdotters are perfectly safe.
Because of that, I don't think UK qualifies as a Western Democracy anymore.
Speaking of stupid posts, laws passed by a democratically elected government on behalf of the people still makes it a democracy even if you disagree with it. Back to civics class with you.
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I'm not sure if you've seen the internet, but believe me Slashdotters are perfectly safe.
Only because /. is US-based and 1A has British thought police right at "fuck off".
Re: UK arrests 30 people a day for speech (Score:2)
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The place a site is based has nothing to do with the content people post on it. People are under the jurisdiction of where they reside, the location of the platform is irrelevant. No one in the UK is being arrested because they are using a UK based service. They are being arrested because someone reported them locally and they were locally identified.
Brits aren't immune because Slashdot is a USA site. And you're not magically under UK law because you post a common on the dailymail.co.uk comments section
No s
So I looked into it (Score:3)
The example in the article you linked to the police admitte
Re:So I looked into it (Score:5, Informative)
He explicitly said that if you see a trans girl in a woman's bathroom you should punch them in the balls.
This is dishonest and misleading account of that story. Graham Linehan was arrested for twitting the following joke:
If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls.
You are part of the problem by equivocating that joke with immediate calls for violence the UK law they used for intended to cover.
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That was not a joke, that was part of a very long running campaign to incite violence against trans people.
Graham Linehan has just been convicted of smashing a child's phone when she confronted him about the months long harassment campaign he waged against her on social media, which included attempts to dox her.
He got off extremely lightly, all things considered. The only reason he beat the harassment charge was because the judge didn't think that the victim was sufficiently harassed, and the prosecution di
You know if you're going to try to disprove me (Score:2)
There is no equivocating here. The man called for violence. The fact that he wanted cops to come and do the violence first doesn't change the fact that he said that when the cops won't come and do the violence you should do the violence yourself. This is classic stochastic terrorism.
America does this too and our police will arrest you for it. The difference is they won't charge you with a speech crime b
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I haven't been able to find a source for this 12,000 claim, but it seems likely that it's untrue.
My guess would be that they simply looked at every arrest where evidence included social media posts, e.g. if someone was assaulted and the attacker happened to have posted on social media about it, that counted.
I am no fan of the UK or the way it is going, but there were clear directions from the government a few years ago that social media posts should only be the basis of arrests in very specific and fairly e
Fails From Australia (Score:4, Informative)
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The so called AI could not understand Scottish or some heavy accents. 2) Human, Operator and 00000's removed so you were in a phone hell loop 3) Unnecessary delay, keywords like Heart attack, car accident, critical, doctor, and barely audible help not escalated. 4) Outsourced, when service levels dropped below standard, the outsourced company got is own people to call in to bump up numbers and fudge performance statistics 5) Dont expect 000 or 911 to actually work, an outage caused by production non-testing caused 4 deaths. 6) Former call operators were 100% not asked to review or score the new system, or do any testing, just a cold switchover. 7) The list goes on. No automatic language detection. 8) redundant questions, like fire ambulance or police, when ambulance and heart attack were in the first ten words.
After listening to some 911 calls, I wonder how the AI system handles panicked calls. Sometimes the human operator has to do some serious calming of the caller to get anything intelligible out of the person making the call.
Re:Fails From Australia (Score:4, Insightful)
This is supposed to be for NON-emergency calls. Not comparable to 911.
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This is supposed to be for NON-emergency calls. Not comparable to 911.
It's right there in TFS: "However, if the system detects keywords suggesting vulnerability or risk or emergency, then it will be able to divert the call to a human being." So if somebody - a child, or an adult confused by panic - calls this number in an emergency, then yes, it IS comparable to 911.
And if that caller is unable to speak clearly enough for the AI to understand, what percentage of the time do you expect the AI to correctly divert the call?
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It sounds like it's more comparable to 311 or 713-848-4888 (local sheriff's office number).
Re: Fails From Australia (Score:2)
The service is useless already (Score:5, Insightful)
Phone 101 and you'll be lucky if anyone bothers to answer before you get a message saying to contact via social media or email or die of old age, so what do people do? They phone the emergency 999 number and clog it up. Though if someone has just stolen your car or chucked a brick through your window its an emergency for you.
Re: The service is useless already (Score:2)
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[Citation Required] I can't find a single reference to Australia trialling an AI model on it's emergency services line. And even if you could find that citation, it has zero to do with the non-emergency police line - the kind of place you call when you want to tell them, yes you do have some info about that crime that was committed last week.
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Simpsons (Score:1)
Something like...
"Press 1 for murder, press 2 for fraud, press 3 for..."
(Bart randomly presses buttons)
"You have selected Regicide..."
Can't wait.
This will not end well (Score:1)
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Police are hardly an essential service. According to https://www.britannica.com/top... [britannica.com]
The first police department in the United States was established in New York City in 1844 (it was officially organized in 1845).
So I guess society was just pure chaos and horrible before then, eh? Of course, if you ask certain segments of society today, the police are much worse. I don't take that stance personally but I still wouldn't say police are essential.
When seconds matter, the police are minutes (or hours) away.
Comment (Score:2)
Hello, this is your slashdot comment. Just interact with it like you normally would.
simple (Score:2)
Easy to train. Just say "uh huh....uh huh...Ok, we don't care."
Re: simple (Score:2)
Very concerning news. (Score:1)
This might mean that not enough cases are routinely mishandled? Will nobody think of the humble British bobby-on-the-beat and his rep for corruption, racism, sexism, domestic violence &c &c?
Put them on trial? (Score:4, Funny)
I thought they were going to put the AI agents on trial. I am disappointed reading that this is not the case.
Soon Agentic AI will also make 911 calls for you (Score:2)
You're a big dummy, and lazy, so just let AI do it for you !
The next step will be drones instead of cops (Score:2)