Apple shouldn’t be using emergency services as worker bees to finish an incomplete feature that results in false positives more often than not.
The article directly mentions that none of the calls have been actual emergencies and that it is absolutely tying up resources.
The feature is fine in spirit, and I am sure it has helped in some situations. But I don’t like Apple failing fast. It’s going to end up costing a life because responders respond unenthusiastically to an automated call or the automated calls tying up resources preventing proper response to a real emergency.
Automation that is not accurate is a real problem. Humans will quickly calibrate to it being wrong most of the time. This has occurred time and time again.
> an incomplete feature that results in false positives more often than not.
It doesn't.
> The article directly mentions that none of the calls have been actual emergencies and that it is absolutely tying up resources.
None of the calls in this small town in the middle of multiple skiing resorts. The feature works pretty well in general and has saved multiple lives. It just unfortunately produces an increased number of false alarms for an activity (skiing) that is done very geographically concentrated, and on top of that impedes responses to confirmation calls (because the phones are kept in the pockets of thick clothes).
> Automation that is not accurate is a real problem. Humans will quickly calibrate to it being wrong most of the time. This has occurred time and time again.
Even if they did that, they would do it only in skiing towns, leaving the feature useful elsewhere.
> It just unfortunately produces an increased number of false alarms for an activity (skiing) that is done very geographically concentrated
Skiing isn't the only industry affected by this. I'm involved in the auto racing industry. At a recent conference, there was some intense discussion about false alarms resulting in emergency services showing up at the track and who's responsible for paying for it.
Absolutely every article I have seen on this topic has the emergency services people stress that the last thing they want is for people to be afraid of calling them. Because they already get cases where people "don't want to be a bother" and end up dead from a heart attack or permanently disabled from a stroke.
They most definitely do not want to eliminate false positives entirely.
> False calls are a nuisance and inappropriately waste resources.
But as I wrote: trying to eliminate them completely would be far worse. The only real waste are false calls that are done deliberately.
Now this case with the Apple devices is a very unusual one that really needs to have its specific circumstances taken into account. And those specific circumstances are that it does not, in general produce a lot of false positives. But for a specific activity it does, and unfortunately that activity is geographically concentrated so that those false positives are also concentrated. That should be addressed, but it absolutely does not mean the feature does more bad than good overall.
What happens when they can only respond to N calls at a time, but have 2N routinely coming in, 2N-1 of which are false positives? They can’t respond to them all. At some point systems like this will unwittingly DOS the 911/first responder situation.
Yes, of course the false positives can become so frequent that it's not tolerable. But that absolutely does not mean that allowing none at all is a sensible goal, because that invariably means more false negatives.
And the article does not sound like the false positives are at the intolerable level, in the opinion of the people actually affected.
But your original comment doesn’t acknowledge the limits on ability to respond. Yes of course in the abstract they would rather respond to all false alarms so as to not miss true alarms, but there’s always a limit. This is why fire departments charge for false alarms. When I worked at my university after graduating, we had a string of false alarms from the data center, and at some point the city allegedly started charging for them. I see no reason not to bill Apple if a jurisdiction has a similar policy already in place.
> But your original comment doesn’t acknowledge the limits on ability to respond.
It also doesn't say that false positives are irrelevant, just that eliminating them should not be the highest priority.
Because the comment I was replying to stated that "the bar should be incredibly high, which would mean that it's basically impossible to hook up automated systems to the emergency services line."
Note that even the emergency personnel directly involved are not arguing that the feature should not exist or only be allowed if it's perfect.
Because they would much rather respond to five false alarms than be too late for a real one.