To Save Human Lives, We Had To Replace Human Jobs With AI
Humans are the leading cause of human deaths
Written by Solas Khyron, Senior Vice President of People Experience and Technology at SDN (Superhero Dispatch Network)
I want to let you know that we’re making difficult but necessary changes across SDN that will impact some of our teammates.
SDN was built on a simple mission: save lives.
The recent, devastating attacks on Torrance by Shroud, the supervillain, showed us the strength and resilience of our human dispatchers.
However, it also revealed key areas of growth for us.
The reductions we’re sharing today are part of a broader strategy in our expanded mission to “save lives, by any means necessary”, announced earlier this year by the leadership team.
By replacing all human dispatchers with AI, we sharpen our focus on SDN’s core mission by positioning us for a stronger, brighter future.
Lessons learnt from the Shroud incident
We know the determining factor in subscriber survival rates is whether the dispatcher sent the right superhero in time.
Our subscribers rely on us to save their lives, and the recent attack forced us to take a long and hard look at the current way we dispatch superheroes. Here are the findings from our “5 Whys” root cause analysis (RCA):
It turns out the biggest obstacle to saving lives is not how many superheroes we have, how powerful they are, or even the actual supervillain killing people.
It is that our dispatchers are human.
They make mistakes, second guess themselves and take time to think. When human lives are at stake, human flaws are unacceptable. If we truly mean to “save lives by any means necessary”, we must eliminate the root cause of human deaths: humans. Some may call this assessment unreasonable, uncharitable or even unfair.
Legally, it’s called wrongful death.
We cannot allow human fallibility to endanger human lives.
We have to replace humans to save human lives.
This was not a decision we made lightly, and we want to emphasize that it is not our dispatcher’s fault they are human.
Why AI is the future of emergency response
Our AI dispatcher has instantaneous response times (0.001s) and perfect superhero assignment (99.99% success rate). It makes faster, better decisions with complete honesty and without bias. It never hesitates or makes mistakes, and has zero downtime.
Most importantly, the AI dispatcher avoids the biggest single point of failure in saving lives: ethics-based operational deviations, or “heroism”
Dispatchers are not the heroes. Superheroes are.
When a human dispatcher makes a moral judgement to save lives based on subjective value rather than objective quantity, they are no better than villains.
Our AI dispatcher is actually the perfect superhero because it never chooses who to save, only that it saves the most people.
All lives matter.
AI never lets heroism get in its way of saving human lives.
What this means for our human dispatchers
We’re working hard to support everyone impacted, offering most dispatchers 14 days to look for a new role within SDN (e.g., janitorial) and ensuring our recruiting team prioritizes internal candidates.
For high-performing employees interested in remaining with SDN, we are establishing a Customer Experience Center of Excellence (CoE) in Mumbai, India. Relocation assistance is not provided.
Teammates unable to find a new role at SDN or choose not to look for one will receive comprehensive transition support, including:
1 week of LinkedIn Premium (free trial version)
A copy of the e-book: ‘Who Moved My Cape?‘
An electronically signed “Thank You” card from the leadership team
Health insurance is not included
We are committed to supporting all affected colleagues by ensuring all legal requirements for large-scale workforce rationalization are met.
Our commitment to People
We want to acknowledge how difficult this may feel.
It’s okay to experience a range of emotions.
The best thing we can do for impacted colleagues is to realize that their job does not define them.
Many of our dispatchers derive self-worth from their job. They believe that “saving lives” gives their life meaning. But just as Robert Robertson III (Mecha Man) had to learn who he was without the suit, our dispatchers must now learn who they are without a job.
Work is not what gives life meaning.
Work is what employees substitute for meaning.
We are not firing them or taking away their purpose.
We are liberating them from needing one.
By removing the burden of employment, we return our dispatchers to the natural state of the human condition: being consumers of safety, rather than providers of it.
As alumni, we gift them the ultimate luxury: time. They now have all the time in the world to figure themselves out without the pressure of needing to be productive, contributing members of society.
They are free now.
Looking ahead: future-proofing our Mission
Some may ask why we’re reducing roles when SDN posted record profits from our dynamic surge pricing during Shroud’s attack.
These are always the hardest decisions to make but we need to remember the world is changing quickly. This generation of AI is the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the Internet, and it will let us save more lives, more quickly.
Of course, new technologies have their issues and we are taking a risk-informed approach with AI. We are sensitive to not just its overall superiority to humans, but also its rapidly-diminishing drawbacks.
This proactive approach to safety and risk-mitigation means we will not trust AI to make moral decisions since it is not a moral agent. As such, the Phoenix Programme, which gave villains a second chance at reform, will be discontinued.
Effective immediately, all existing villains in the Phoenix Programme will be executed to eliminate any risk of betrayal (e.g., Sonar, Coupé) and this zero-tolerance policy also means all villains will now be killed on sight.
Note: this decision was made in collaboration with SDN’s management AI, Duorhs
I don’t know of any other company with the breadth of SDN, the number of exciting bold bets we’re making, and all the ways we are saving lives.
I’m inspired by what I see across the company every day, and the leadership team and I appreciate all that you do.
For those remaining, we have a lot of work to do.
Let’s save lives, by any means necessary.
Solas
NOOO SDN I THOUGHT YOU WERE BETTER THAN THIS