‘Incomprehensible’ storm warning from drone leaves furious residents saying it sounds like a ‘Google translation’

NEW York City emergency management officials have apologized for a confusing flood warning issued by drones flying overhead in some neighborhoods.

City officials had touted the high-tech message delivery devices ahead of expected flash flooding on Tuesday.

Getty

Getty

But when the video of a drone delivering the warning in English and Spanish was shared widely on social media , users quickly took issue with the pronunciation of the translation.

This version was delivered to a city where roughly a quarter of all residents speak the language at home.

“How is THAT the Spanish version? It’s almost incomprehensible,” one user posted on X.

“Any Spanish-speaking NYer would do better,” they continued.

“The city couldn’t find a single person who spoke Spanish to deliver this alert?” another X user wrote.

“It’s unfortunate because it sounds like a literal Google translation,” added another.

Zach Iscol, the city’s emergency management commissioner, acknowledged on social media that the translation “shouldn’t have happened.”

He also promised that he and other officials were working to “make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

In a follow-up post on X, he provided the full Spanish text and explained that the problem was in the recording of the message, not the translation itself.

Iscol’s agency has said the message was computer-generated and went out in historically flood-prone areas in four of the city’s five boroughs, excluding Manhattan.

Flash floods have been deadly for New Yorkers living in basement apartments, which can quickly fill up with water and drown their occupants.

In 2021, Hurricane Ida drenched the city and drowned eleven people in their basement homes .

The agency also noted that the drone messaging effort was a first-of-its-kind pilot for the city.

The agency says the effort was “developed and approved following our standard protocols, just like all our public communications.”

However, Iscol and the agency declined to say what changes would be made going forward.

In an interview with The New York Times, Iscol credited Mayor Eric Adams with the idea to use drones.

“You know, we live in a bubble, and we have to meet people where they are in notifications so they can be prepared,” Adams said on Tuesday.

Adams, whose office didn’t immediately comment Wednesday, is a self-described “tech geek” whose administration has embraced a range of innovative – and questionable – technological gimmicks and implementations.

What are the arguments against AI?

Artificial intelligence is a highly contested issue, and it seems everyone has a stance on it. Here are some common arguments against it:

Loss of jobs – Some industry experts argue that AI will create new niches in the job market, and as some roles are eliminated, others will appear. However, many artists and writers insist the argument is ethical, as generative AI tools are being trained on their work and wouldn’t function otherwise.

Ethics – When AI is trained on a dataset, much of the content is taken from the Internet. This is almost always, if not exclusively, done without notifying the people whose work is being taken.

Privacy – Content from personal social media accounts may be fed to language models to train them. Concerns have cropped up as Meta unveils its AI assistants across platforms like Facebook and Instagram. There have been legal challenges to this: in 2016, legislation was created to protect personal data in the EU, and similar laws are in the works in the United States.

Misinformation – As AI tools pulls information from the Internet, they may take things out of context or suffer hallucinations that produce nonsensical answers. Tools like Copilot on Bing and Google’s generative AI in search are always at risk of getting things wrong. Some critics argue this could have lethal effects – such as AI prescribing the wrong health information.

Last year, Adam’s office raised eyebrows when his administration started using artificial intelligence to make robocalls.

These calls used a cloned version of the mayor’s voice in several different languages that he doesn’t speak, including Mandarin and Yiddish.

His administration has also tapped into drone technology to monitor large gatherings and even search for sharks on the city’s beaches.

The city’s police department, meanwhile, briefly used a robot to patrol the Times Square subway station.

Last month, the NYPD also unveiled new AI-powered scanners in an effort to try and keep guns out of the nation’s busiest subway system.

But this effort is already being met with skepticism and threats of lawsuits from civil liberties unions and advocates.