AI that can detect hoax calls put through its paces in new trial

Artificial intelligence technology developed by a Queensland researcher to identify hoax calls is set to be tested at some emergency centres, potentially freeing up operators to deal with real emergencies. University of Southern Queensland computer scientist Dr Rajib Rana has spent the past three years developing the artificial intelligence algorithms required to detect whether someone is genuinely in trouble or whether they are playing a time-wasting prank. Dr Rajib Rana has received an Advance Queensland COVID-19 Industry Research Fellowship to develop his distress inference system. Dr Rana said the "distress inference system" was designed to detect the level of distress in a person's voice, and assess whether it is in line with the sort of incident they are describing. "When people are in real distress there are physiological changes which happen in speech production, like your mouth dries out, your breathing rate increases, that sort of thing," he said.