[joenot443]

I think conversations like this are difficult because in an indirect way, we're asking people to quantify the tradeoff of a human life vs mass human inconvenience. If the feature caused false-positives at a 1000:1 rate of real (unreported) accidents, would it be worth saving one life for 1000 wasted 911 calls? How about 10,000?

I don't have a confident answer for this at all, I think it's almost entirely subjective. There are folks who would confidently say that ANY amount of mass inconvenience is worth saving one life. There are others that would confidently say the opposite. Much more thoughtful people than I have spent a long time debating the topic on LessWrong, it's a pretty rich area of discussion.

[dahfizz]

It goes beyond inconvenience, IMO.

First, there are the direct costs. If false auto-calls are clogging up 911 resources, then the taxpayers need to pay for more operators and infrastructure. This money could be used to "save lives" elsewhere.

Then there are second order effects such as lowering the signal/noise ratio of 911 calls. If operators get used to ignoring the automated calls, then the feature becomes a pure cost on society with little/no benefit.