Dear friends,
Last month, a drone from Skyfire AI was credited with saving a police officer’s life after a dramatic 2 a.m. traffic stop. Many statistics show that AI impacts billions of lives, but sometimes a story still hits me emotionally. Let me share what happened.
Skyfire AI, an AI Fund portfolio company led by CEO Don Mathis, operates a public safety program in which drones function as first responders to 911 calls. Particularly when a police department is personnel-constrained, drones can save officers’ time while enhancing their situational awareness. For example, many burglar alarms are false alarms, maybe set off by moisture or an animal. Rather than sending a patrol officer to drive over to discover this, a drone can get there faster and determine if an officer is required at all. If the alarm is real, the drone can help officers understand the situation, the locations of any perpetrators, and how best to respond.
In January, a Skyfire AI drone was returning to base after responding to a false alarm when the police dispatcher asked us to reroute it to help locate a patrol officer. The officer had radioed a few minutes earlier that he had pulled over a suspicious vehicle and had not been heard from since. The officer had stopped where two major highways intersect in a complex cloverleaf, and dispatch was unsure exactly where they were located.
From the air, the drone rapidly located the officer and the driver of the vehicle he had pulled over, who it turned out had escaped from a local detention facility. Neither would have been visible from the road — they were fighting in a drainage ditch below the highway. Because of the complexity of the cloverleaf’s geometry, the watch officer (who coordinates police activities for the shift) later estimated it would have taken 5-7 minutes for an officer in a patrol car to find them.
From the aerial footage, it appeared that the officer still had his radio, but was losing the fight and unable to reach it to call for help. Further, it looked like the assailant might gain control of his service weapon and use it against him. This was a dire and dangerous situation.
Fortunately, because the drone had pinpointed the location of the officer and his assailant, dispatch was able to direct additional units to assist. The first arrived not in 5-7 minutes but in 45 seconds. Four more units arrived within minutes.
The officers were able to take control of the situation and apprehend the driver, resulting in an arrest and, more important, a safe outcome for the officer. Subsequently, the watch officer said we’d probably saved the officer’s life.
Democratic nations still have a lot of work to do on drone technology, and we must build this technology with guardrails to make sure we enhance civil liberties and human rights. But I am encouraged by the progress we’re making. In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene last year, Skyfire AI’s drones supported search-and-rescue operations under the direction of the North Carolina Office of Emergency Management, responding to specific requests to help locate missing persons and direct rescue assets (e.g., helicopters and boats) to their location, and was credited with saving 13 lives.
It’s not every day that AI directly saves someone's life. But as our technology advances, I think there will be more and more stories like these.
Keep building!
Andrew