Artificial intelligence based on ChatGPT technology will manage calls to 112 during traffic jams from 2025, Deputy Interior Secretary-General António Pombeiro told reporters in Porto on Tuesday.
“In principle, if the pilot project is successful, we are ready to start using” the system to answer calls from 2025, António Pombeiro told reporters today on the sidelines of MAI Tech, a security and civil protection technology conference promoted by the Ministry of the Interior (MAI ) in Port.
The official warned that work is currently underway on a pilot project that is “very new technology” with “a lot of testing needed”, acknowledging that there are “many unknowns” going on.
“In certain situations, we have waiting periods caused by call overload, this is when incidents or events occur that require wide publicity, many people visualize what is happening, everyone has the initiative to call 112,” António Pombeiro explained. , giving an example of urban fires.
Since the resources are “calculated for normal situations”, generating call response wait times that “can be as high as five or six minutes”, the idea is to “create the first interface that answers the call, evaluates what the problem is, regardless on what is being treated and what kind of reporting is required”, but with a “natural language response”.
According to the deputy secretary general of internal affairs, “the caller himself will not understand that he is talking to a system, a machine, a robot”, which will “use the new ChatGPT technology”, which will still go through a testing period. with simulated calls.
“The second player must always be a human. The system never fully accepts a call,” António Pombeiro assured, adding that the system would work “only during heavy congestion.”
When asked about the replacement of people, the Deputy Secretary General of the Ministry of Internal Affairs rejected it, saying that it was about “strengthening operational means”, since it is always necessary to have a person in the rear.
As for false calls (for deception or for purposes other than emergencies), which he says are around 60%, a “very high number” that does not affect service, the official said that in this situation, “no longer there is enough other training”, but “this is also the goal” of the new project.