CW: Death
New Orleans is considering making major changes to its emergency response systems by integrating AI technology. For disabled residents, the changes could do more harm than good. With the city moving toward AI (artificial intelligence) assisted emergency response, there’s a pressing need for oversight to ensure all residents can still get help when they need it.
History shows that misunderstandings can be tragic. In 1987, a deaf woman in San Diego tried to call for help using her telecommunications device. Dispatchers thought the call was a prank. She later died from respiratory failure.
Officials in New Orleans say AI tools won’t replace emergency dispatchers who answer 911 calls. After a news report suggested the city was moving toward automated call-taking, the Orleans Parish Communication District clarified. They stated that AI is not answering 911 calls and won’t be used to replace human dispatchers.
Instead, they see technology as a way to help sort calls and reduce the workload on an understaffed system. While these reassurances are important, they don’t completely address the concerns about how AI might impact emergency calls, especially when people have difficulty communicating.
Studies from Penn State show that AI language models can be biased against disabled people. When disability intersects with poverty, race, or gender, these biases get stronger. Someone whose speech is hard to understand, or whose communication is misunderstood because of an intellectual disability, might be seen by AI as not making sense or not being serious.
Even if a human dispatcher is still involved, AI’s suggestions could change how that dispatcher views the caller. In an emergency, this kind of misinterpretation isn’t just bad; it could be fatal.
Advocates say AI systems could be helpful. Not only could the systems help a dispatcher to more quickly identify the nature of a medical emergency, but they could minimize human error during times of disaster and assist callers who are unable to verbalize their concerns due to the stress of the situation. These are real possibilities, but only if the systems are designed and built to incorporate a range of different needs.
The city’s promises that people will remain in charge are vital, but they don’t address the main problem: safety should be a priority, not optional. If New Orleans utilizes AI without considering the needs of everyone, the system could end up causing tragedies instead of preventing them. The questions around a 911 system that uses AI aren’t just about the technology itself. They are about people: Whom will this system truly help? Who might be ignored?
Sources:
Morris, Athina. “New Orleans 911 Agency Pushes Back on Report Claiming AI Is Replacing Human Operators.” WWL-TV, 7 Aug. 2026, https://www.wwltv.com/article/news/local/public-safety/new-orleans-911-agency-pushes-back-on-report-claiming-ai-is-replacing-human-operators/289-0739dde8-36ea-4bc2-8b28-753ccde141b9.
Scott, Janny. “Deaf Confront Deadly Problem: Unanswered Help Calls to 911.” Los Angeles Times, 1 Feb. 1987, http://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-02-01-mn-308-story.html.
“The Impact of the Use of AI on People with Disabilities.” New York City Bar Association, 12 June 2025, https://www.nycbar.org/reports/the-impact-of-the-use-of-ai-on-people-with-disabilities/.
Tyler, Presley Bo. “Is New Orleans Using AI to Answer 911 Calls Instead of Human Dispatchers? Impacts on Emergencies, Crime.” Shreveport Times, 28 July 2026, updated 10 Aug. 2026, https://www.shreveporttimes.com/story/news/local/louisiana/2026/07/28/is-new-orleans-using-ai-to-answer-911-calls-instead-of-human-dispatchers-impacts-emergencies-crime/91065014007/.
Venkit, Pranav Narayanan, Mukund Srinath, and Shomir Wilson. “A Study of Implicit Bias in Pretrained Language Models against People with Disabilities.” Proceedings of the 29th International Conference on Computational Linguistics, International Committee on Computational Linguistics, 2022, pp. 1324–1332, https://aclanthology.org/2022.coling-1.113/.