TALLAHASSEE, Fla — The person warning you about Florida’s next hurricane might not be a person at all. Florida’s Emergency Management team rolled out new AI technology Wednesday that, they say, will save lives during future emergencies.
Think of your average weather report. Little music in the background, a baritone meteorologist predicting partly cloudy conditions. Pretty standard, don’t you think?
Think again. AI now has the power to give you an almost identical broadcast to what you’d hear on your car radio, but it’s not a real person, just real information. And a real opportunity, say state officials, to inform people during emergencies.
BEACON (Broadcast Emergency Alerts and Communications Operations Network) is a first-of-its-kind program created as a joint venture between Florida Emergency Management, the University of Florida, and an AI company called Futuri. BEACON gathers emergency alerts and messages from official federal/state/local sources, prioritizes them, and turns them into a 24/7 AI-powered radio station.
Listeners can stream it on the BEACON app or over the air with a regular old radio. Florida’s Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie said during Wednesday’s rollout speed was among the biggest benefits.
“That goes straight to the airwaves,” he said. “And we're really excited about that technology and that capability to get instant messaging out on the airwaves, and I guarantee you sometime over the next, you know, decades, that we will save lives.”
The program is starting small. Just one BEACON, for now, operating out of the public radio station WUFT in Gainesville. In the future, BEACONs could be across the state, broadcasting in multiple languages and at all hours.
The concept is simple. When an emergency happens, officials push out alerts, and in seconds, BEACON turns them into broadcasts that will run before, during, and as recovery begins.
AI systems have come under scrutiny for reliability, recently. The Associated Press reported this in October. An AI hospital transcription tool was found to be making stuff up — including “racial commentary, violent rhetoric and even imagined medical treatments.”
“It really depends on the quality of data that is being fed into the system,” said Futuri CEO Daniel Anstandig.
He dismissed accuracy concerns. BEACON, Anstandig said, will get its info from trusted sources, meaning its broadcasts will be just as trustworthy.
“We know that the data is highly controlled,” said Anstandig. “It's high integrity, and so we have measures in place to be sure that we're only ever processing or using information that originates from statewide agencies or from sanctioned government agencies, and that makes a difference.”
BEACON’s next steps aren't certain. It’ll be up to the legislature to fund it and expand the program across Florida. That means the AI’s operators “will be back” next year to ask lawmakers for more cash when the session begins in March.
Something to be mindful of. Florida is entering a new year where one of the main goals of Florida's new House SpeakerDanny Perez is trimming the budget. What that means for programs like this remains uncertain-- though emergency management often ranks high on the state's priority list.
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