According to António Pombeiro, Deputy Secretary-General of the Internal Administration, who spoke to journalists on 20 June in Porto, “if the pilot project goes well, we are prepared to start using the system to answer calls as of 2025.”
Currently, we are facing “a very recent technology”, and there is the “need to do many tests”, admitting that for now we are “very much in the unknown”, so the operation of the pilot project will be key.
“In certain situations, we have waiting periods due to the great amount of calls. This happens when there are incidents that involve a lot of publicity, a lot of people watching what is happening and everyone has the initiative to call 112”, said António Pombeiro, giving the example of urban fires.
Yeah, I do understand the frustration the same as with ATM when they were new if you don’t have the background knowledge then navigating menus and pressing buttons feels strange - that tech soon became ubiquitous though and for most people today ATM are basically obsolete because phone apps are far more convenient.
I think we’ll see the same happen, everyone will get used to talking to AI and systems will be refined - it won’t be long before you don’t even need to call up to get them to change your account because you’ll just tell your AI to sort it out and it’ll handle all the communication.