AI’s benefits, drawbacks, and safety concerns

@by Mark Ollig

A Sept. 17, 2025, Pew Research Center survey found that only 13% of Americans are comfortable receiving help from artificial intelligence, while 27% prefer no AI assistance at all.

Pew reported that 50% of Americans are more concerned than enthusiastic about AI’s growing role in daily life.

About 76% say it is important to know whether content is created by AI or a person, but 53% stated they lack confidence in being able to distinguish between the two.

On problem-solving skills, 29% believe AI assistance will help, and 38% think it will worsen our own analytical skills.

Many support AI in certain roles: 74% favor it in weather forecasting, 70% in detecting financial crimes, 70% in finding fraudulent checks, 66% in medical drug development, 61% in identifying crime suspects, and 46% in mental health support services.

According to another Pew report released April 3 of this year, 64% of US adults expect AI to reduce jobs over the next 20 years.

Only 5% expected more jobs, 14% expected little change, and 16% were unsure.

A Gallup survey found that the regular workplace use of AI increased from 21% in 2023 to 40% this year, while frequent usage rose from 11% to 19%.

Since 2011, Minnesota Information Technology Services (MNIT), has managed IT for the state executive branch, including infrastructure, software applications, and cybersecurity.

MNIT established statewide policies aligned with the One Minnesota Plan, appointed the state’s first AI director, and created an AI Leads group (a cross-agency team that coordinates AI work and helps agencies apply policy).

In 2023, it released the Public AI Services Security Standard.

According to the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), organizations that build or use AI should limit system access to authorized personnel and continuously monitor for bias or irregular performance.

The White House announced July 10 America’s AI Action Plan to boost innovation and adoption, simplify procurement, and strengthen protections for data centers, chips, cybersecurity, and responsible use.

A late-July directive instructed federal agencies to expedite environmental reviews and federal permit approvals for large data-center projects to shorten their completion timelines.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT now manages real-time phone conversations through its Realtime application programming interface (API).

Telephone service providers use Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) to set up the call, connect to the PSTN (public switched telephone network), and convert the caller’s audio into a data stream for the Realtime API.

AI processes the speech, generates a reply, and the provider sends it back to the caller as phone audio.

Because the SIP connection ties into the PSTN, a ChatGPT-powered agent can place and receive calls to regular phone numbers.

Meta (formerly Facebook) is building its largest data center in Richland Parish, LA, to support AI model training, with a cost of approximately $10 billion.

The data center is scheduled to come online later this decade.

Microsoft announced May 8, 2024, a $3.3 billion AI data center in Mount Pleasant, WI, expected to open in early 2026.

The data center will use thousands of NVIDIA graphics processing units (GPUs), which are specialized chips that perform multiple calculations simultaneously, enabling AI systems to be developed more quickly and respond faster when in use.

Microsoft’s Copilot AI is integrated into Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Visual Studio, with coverage expanding over time.

Minnesota IT Services organized the Transparent Artificial Intelligence Governance Alliance (TAIGA) in July 2023 to coordinate state AI policy, governance, and safety.

TAIGA helped publish the state’s Public Artificial Intelligence Services Security Standard in October 2023.

The Minnesota Department of Transportation has adopted a Generative Artificial Intelligence Standard (IT-003, effective July 14 of this year).

Generative AI refers to software that generates new content, such as text, images, audio, or code, based on patterns learned from existing data.

The city of Rochester operates the 311 phone number for non-emergency help; there, its AI-powered “Ask Chester” chatbot answers questions and takes service requests 24/7.

Anoka County is piloting an AI voice system for non-emergency calls, and Dakota County 911 is employing AI attendants.

The Mayo Clinic in Rochester uses AI to support diagnosis and research, including digital pathology and analysis of electrocardiogram (ECG) heart tests, to help clinicians make quicker, more precise decisions.

Telecommunications providers operating in Minnesota employ AI in their network operations to analyze traffic, enhance call routing, and improve reliability through traffic optimization, proactive maintenance, and self-healing networks that automatically correct certain faults.

T-Mobile is enhancing its 5G network with AI through a partnership with NVIDIA.

Verizon uses AI for energy efficiency and network optimization, and AT&T applies AI for automation and management of its network operations.

My advice: verify AI-generated content because AI can make mistakes. Ask it to cite its sources, and check them out.

Minnesotans and people across the country continue to debate the benefits, drawbacks, and safety concerns of AI’s growing role in our daily lives.

GETS: priority emergency communications

@Mark Ollig

What if the nation’s telecom network became overly congested?

There would be immediate disruption across emergency services, business, government, healthcare, and everyday life.

Nationwide, this would create confusion and probably some panic.

According to the US Wireless Industry Association, the United States had 447,605 operational cell sites at year-end 2024.

The cell sites’ calls interconnect with the public switched telephone network (PSTN) through standard switching platforms and assorted interconnection gateways.

By late 2024, the industry directory Cloudscene listed more than 5,400 US data centers.

Technical glitches and interruptions with the nation’s communications network can occur from more than just fiber cuts.

A massive cyberattack could overwhelm communication networks, data centers, AI systems, and their redundancy backup networks.

Severe solar storms, also known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs), can disrupt the ionosphere, interfere with satellite communications and radio signals, and cause power grid issues that can impact telephone and internet networks.

And one I prefer not to think about: an electromagnetic pulse from a high-altitude nuclear detonation could devastate electronic circuits and transformers; turning off both broadband and legacy switching platforms, and probably a lot of us.

In 2018, the telecommunications network supported both legacy digital systems and modern soft-switch platforms, connecting billions of calls and internet sessions daily.

The same year, I received a Government Emergency Telecommunications Service (GETS) authorized card from the Department of Homeland Security.

CISA states that GETS provides priority access and prioritized call processing in the local and long-distance segments of landline telephone networks during emergencies.

“GETS supports national security and public safety communications for government officials, emergency responders, and critical infrastructure owners and operators,” CISA stated.

Priority communications for government began with the National Communications System in the 1960s; GETS launched in 1994 and moved under DHS in 2003.

GETS is used in telecom networks across all 50 states.

Today, CISA manages GETS and Wireless Priority Service (WPS) through its Emergency Communications Division.

To use Wireless Priority Service, an authorized and provisioned user dials *272 before the destination number on a supported wireless network.

Authorization and provisioning are handled by CISA and the user’s cellular carrier. Calls are prioritized once they enter the public switched telephone network.

Satellite calls also receive GETS priority when they are downlinked through a PSTN gateway.

Authorized GETS users can make calls using various telecom devices, including rotary and touchtone phones; cell and satellite phones; and telephones used by diplomatic, government, and military personnel.

In 2018, many legacy digital telecom platforms from the 1980s and 1990s, such as Nortel’s DMS, AT&T’s 5ESS, and Stromberg-Carlson’s DCO, were in use alongside modern soft-switches, including Metaswitch.

Legacy platforms could be accessed from dedicated terminals, dial-up modems, and Telnet for programming and maintenance, which I utilized while working in the telephone industry.

The Office of Emergency Communications (now CISA’s Emergency Communications Division) documentation states that GETS supports priority applied to PSTN call setup.

Authorized users can access GETS from their Globalstar, Inmarsat, or Iridium satellite phones.

Priority treatment is applied once the call passes into the PSTN.

Iridium offers true global coverage, serving all continents, oceans, and both polar regions.

Inmarsat covers nearly the entire globe, allowing users to connect from almost anywhere, except for the most remote areas near the North and South Poles.

Globalstar offers regional coverage, with reliable service in most of North America, parts of South America, Europe, northern Asia, and Australia.

My 2018 GETS user guide explained that the Enhanced Mobile Satellite Services (EMSS) program ensures secure communications for authorized users by utilizing the Iridium satellite network and a dedicated Department of Defense (DoD) gateway.

This gateway bridges secure voice and data communications with military networks and the commercial PSTN.

Through GETS, calls made via the Enhanced Mobile Satellite Services (EMSS) receive priority as they pass through this gateway.

From a landline, cellphone, military or government phone, satellite phone, or computer workstation, an authorized user first dials any required access codes, followed by 1-710-xxx-xxxx.

After the GETS tone, they enter their PIN (personal identification number) and call the destination (area code plus number).

Once the call reaches the PSTN, GETS priority call routing is applied.

The 710 area code is reserved for the US Government Emergency Telecommunications Service.

The Iridium satellite network stands out with its unique ability to operate as a self-contained, intelligent telephone switchboard in space, designed to process and route calls between satellites and to the PSTN.

The 2018 diagram’s text and diagrams show GETS access authorization, enhanced routing, and priority treatment.

The diagram shows entry points into the PSTN for private branch exchange (PBX) telephone systems for government and business, as well as special secure phones and equipment.

It also illustrates cellular networks, international gateways, fax lines, the Diplomatic Telecommunications Service (DTS), and the Defense Switched Network (DSN).

At the top of the diagram are the Inmarsat, Iridium, and Globalstar satellites with their downlinked gateways into the PSTN, along with NETWORX, which provides voice, data, video, mobile, satellite, and internet services for government operations throughout the US.

A person seated at a computer workstation accessing the PSTN via GETS is shown on the bottom right.

The diagram shows access lines from phones, towers, and satellites feed back into the map’s PSTN hub.

The GETS card displays the Department of Homeland Security seal with a bald eagle holding an olive branch and arrows, encircled by a blue band reading “US Department of Homeland Security.”

While working in the telecom industry, GETS authorization enabled me to bypass congested network paths using priority call routing, allowing me to access, diagnose, and troubleshoot various legacy digital telecom platforms.

The official CISA link for the Government Emergency Telecommunications Service (GETS) is: https://bit.ly/3Ve8vtx.

Nightly glow: from phone booths to smartphone screens

@ Mark Ollig


Richard Busteed of New York received US Patent 282,841 titled: “Telephone Cabinet” Aug. 7, 1883.

It was an enclosure designed to house telephones in public locations outside homes and offices.

His patent says, “I provide a cabinet four or five feet square if rectangular in form.”

Busteed’s patent diagram shows a door, a window, an air ventilator, a writing shelf, and a wall-mounted telephone.

William Gray installed the first coin-operated public telephone at Hartford Bank in Connecticut Aug. 13, 1889.

He received US Patent 408,709 for “Coin Controlled Apparatus for Telephones.”

Originally, payphones used a “post-pay” system, which allowed users to complete calls before depositing coins, as instructed by an operator.

Early 20th-century regulators referred to payphones as “pay-station telephones.”

Outdoor coin payphones began appearing on city streets in 1905.

In 1922, the number of public pay stations in Minnesota was 2,094, and by 1926, it had increased to 2,782, per the Minnesota Railroad and Warehouse Commission.

In the 1940s, the Bell Telephone System widely used Western Electric three-slot rotary-dial payphones, including the wall-mounted 233G and desk-mounted 234G models.

These sturdy phones accepted nickels, dimes, and quarters, featuring a secure coin vault in the base and a rotary dial in the upper housing.

A separate “subset” box, usually mounted in the booth or on a nearby wall, contained the ringer, induction coil, capacitor, and wiring.

In the mid-1950s, the Bell System manufactured the Airlight Outdoor Telephone Booth.

It had an aluminum frame with tempered glass walls, an illuminated sign that said “telephone,” fluorescent lighting, writing shelves, and ventilation louvers.

The booth also offered shelter from the rain.

Many telephone companies, including the Winsted Telephone Company, used an Airlight booth.

During the late 1950s and early 1960s, Automatic Electric Company manufactured the LPC-86-55 three-slot rotary-dial payphone, widely used by independent telephone companies, including in Winsted.

The LPC-86-55 was built with a heavy enamel steel case and an armored handset cord.

Across the top were slots for nickels, dimes, and quarters, each routed through an escrow chute and held until the telephone company’s central office signaled a collection or return.

The LPC-86-55 payphone had a coin return chute and a locked vault door with a removable cash box.

It operated on semi-postpay logic: callers heard dial tone when they lifted the handset, but the payphone’s transmitter was shunted (muted) up until the central office equipment confirmed payment.

Coin deposits were indicated by distinct sounds: one “ding” for a nickel, two “dings” for a dime, and a deep, reverberating sounding “gong” for a quarter.

Once the called party answered and the appropriate coins were deposited, the central office reversed the line’s battery polarity, removing the shunt and allowing for two-way conversation.

At the end of the call, signaling from the central office sent coins either into the payphone’s vault or back through the return chute.

The front panel featured a rotary dial and an instruction card with the old Winsted Telephone Company phone number: 485-2111 (612 area code).

Winsted’s payphone numbers initially used the 612-485-9xxx range.

The 612 area code was introduced in 1947, and Winsted switched to 320 in 1996.

Western Electric introduced the Fortress in the mid-1960s, a secure single-coin slot payphone that became widely deployed across the Bell Telephone System by the late 1960s.

The Automatic Electric Model 120 payphone was manufactured from the early 1970s to the mid-1980s.

It was a fortress-style, single-slot payphone that accepted nickels, dimes, and quarters, and it was widely used by independent telephone companies such as Winsted.

In Winsted, before 1986, the infrastructure supporting these payphones was wired to pay-station trunks on the telephone company’s Leich (pronounced “like”) electromechanical voice switch.

For long-distance and operator-handled calls, the Leich switch had dedicated trunking that interconnected with the Bell System’s Traffic Service Position System (TSPS).

TSPS is a centralized switchboard platform for automated operator assistance and payphone coin control.

Introduced in 1969, TSPS managed functions such as connecting calls, charging for long-distance calls, and signaling payphones to collect or return coins.

In 1977, Automated Coin Toll Service (ACTS) was added by AT&T.

ACTS used recorded voice prompts and electronic equipment to replace live operators, verify deposits, and signal the payphone to collect or return coins.

Throughout the 1950s and into the 1990s, many payphones were installed in Winsted.

One particularly popular payphone was in an Airlight booth on First Street North, just north of where Gene’s Red Owl grocery store (later G&K) was located.

The store building is no longer there, and that location now serves as the entrance to Security Bank & Trust Co.’s outdoor ATM and teller lane.

Other payphones were at St. Mary’s Hospital and Home, the Blue Note Ballroom, The Pantry Café, Kegs Bar, and the Corner Bar.

One was at the police station in the old city hall building, and another was at the Tom Thumb store.

Holy Trinity High School had a payphone located in the front lobby, to the left of the trophy case, which was used frequently during school hours and after evening events.

Another payphone was located on the property inside the Sterner Stables barn, which was later developed into the Winsted on the Lake housing complex.

And of course, there was the payphone in the front office of the Winsted Telephone Co.

At Winsted Telephone Company, we collected money from payphones monthly and weekly in busier locations to prevent the coin chutes from jamming.

We repaired dials, keypads, switches, relays, coin chutes, and replaced handsets and cords, and occasionally, we replaced the payphone.

We had our share of payphones marked “out of order” due to vandalism.

As more people started using cellphones, payphones were removed because they were no longer generating revenue.

By 2018, the FCC ended payphone reporting requirements.

In April 2022, a lost child in Andover used a working novelty payphone to dial 911 (no coins needed for an emergency call).

The payphone, installed by resident Brian Davis in his front yard, was the lifeline that helped reunite the child with his family.

Many of us can remember sliding open a payphone booth’s door, dialing a number, hearing the familiar dings and gongs of coins dropping, or, asking the operator, “I’d like to make a collect call.”

I asked my sons, who are ages 38 to 42, if they remember using a payphone:

Son number one said, “Once or twice.”

Son number two responded, “Many moons ago, the one in front of the Tom Thumb store comes to mind.”

Son number three mentioned, “I have. In high school . . . in 2005.”

I recall, many years ago, driving through downtown Winsted at night and seeing the soft, warm, and yes, comforting glow of the phone booth next to the grocery store.

Someday, our children may nostalgically look back on the soft, warm glow of their smartphone screens at night.

A local telephone company’s ‘giant leap’ into fiber-optics

@ Mark Ollig

In July 1966, Charles K. Kao and George A. Hockham published a paper showing that impurities in glass were causing severe signal loss in experimental fibers.

They stated that if losses could be reduced to about 32 decibels (dB) per mile, glass fibers could be used for telephone voice transmission.

In 1970, Corning Glass Works scientists Robert Maurer, Donald Keck, and Peter Schultz demonstrated a fused-silica optical fiber with a loss of about 27 to 28 dB per mile.

They used a helium-neon laser as the light source, surpassing Kao’s threshold and proving that glass strands could be used for telecommunications.

By the early 1970s, Corning had reduced fiber losses to about 6 dB per mile. Within a few more years, single-mode fiber designs were approaching losses of less than about 1.6 dB per mile.

AT&T, Illinois Bell, and Bell Labs tested a 1.5-mile fiber-optic telephone link in Chicago May 11, 1977.

The cable, laid in underground telephone ducts, carried voice, data, and video signals encoded as laser light pulses, linking one office building with two of its exchanges.

By the mid-1980s, telephone companies were replacing their copper cabling with fiber-optic cables for interoffice trunk connections.

In 1988, Winsted Telephone Company installed a single-mode fiber-optic cable linking its Class 5 DMS-10 local exchange to the US West Class 4 tandem office in Buffalo.

Class 4 tandem offices connected local Class 5 exchanges, such as Winsted, and routed their long-distance calls through the public switched telephone network (PSTN).

During a conversation with my brother Mike, who worked with me at the telephone company, he recalled those days as if they were yesterday.

Winsted Telephone Company buried a fiber-optic cable from 171 Second Street S., Winsted, to the US West tandem office boundary at the edge of Buffalo.

US West buried its segment from 97 Second Street NE., Buffalo, to that boundary, where the two cables were spliced together at a shared meet point.

I compare that fiber splice to the 1869 ceremonial golden spike that joined the first transcontinental railroad.

The completed interoffice single-mode fiber span measured about 23.5 miles.

It replaced a buried 19-gauge, 25-pair toll cable from the early 1960s that carried Winsted’s long-distance traffic to a US West tandem office in Howard Lake.

From there, calls were handed off to the US West Class 4 tandem in Wayzata and then routed to the AT&T Long Lines Minneapolis Downtown Class 4 tandem at 200 S. Fifth Street.

Some readers may remember that United Telephone Company had a telephone exchange in Howard Lake. The US West (formerly Northwestern Bell) building was a couple of blocks east of it.

But I digress.

The Winsted fiber span was accessed from the company’s Nortel DMS-10 (Digital Multiplex System-10) through an NEC (Nippon Electric Company) RC-28D digital multiplexer.

Technicians installed the single-mode fiber to the RC-28D’s optical modules using FC (Ferrule Connector) or ST (Straight Tip) connectors.

The RC-28D combined 28 T1 (DS1) circuits, each with 24 channels, into a single DS3 signal operating at 44.736 Mbps, enough to carry 672 voice channels (28 T1s × 24).

A High-Speed Transmit Optical (HS XMT OPT) module in the RC-28D converted the channelized DS3 signal into light and sent it over the fiber.

A High-Speed Receive Optical (HS RCV OPT) module in the RC-28D converted the light back into a DS3 signal at the other end.

The DS3 was tested with a T-Berd DS3/DS1 analyzer, which checked for bit errors and verified continuity while monitoring for conditions such as signal loss, frame loss and alarm indications.

Using the formula Loss (dB) = Attenuation per mile (dB/mile) × Distance (miles), the fiber showed an average loss of about 0.5 to 0.75 dB per mile, totaling 12 to 18 dB over 23.5 miles, which was within the DS3 loss margin.

Each optical module in the RC-28D shelf was checked, along with its alarm indicators.

Technicians verified the laser transmitter’s performance by measuring its bias, which is the small, steady current that keeps the laser active.

They checked this at the RC-28D’s LD BIAS MON test point to ensure the transmitter was operating within its specified range.

At the Buffalo tandem office, the DS3 signal transmitted over the shared fiber span from Winsted was received and provisioned for interoffice connections.

That DS3 also carried DS1 voice channels to the Winsted DMS-10 through its digital trunk cards for two-way long-distance calling.

Long-distance calls from the DMS-10 sent dialing information to the tandem using in-band multi-frequency (MF) tones, and the tandem processed the digits and routed the calls through the public switched telephone network.

By the fall of 1988, Winsted Telephone Company had a state-of-the-art fiber-optic link that connected its digital exchange to the public switched telephone network.

It was a “giant leap” into cutting-edge technology for Winsted Telephone Company’s subscribers and for those of us who worked there.

Charles K. Kao, who was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work in fiber optics, died Sept. 23, 2018, at age 84.

The 1966 paper “Dielectric-Fibre Surface Waveguides for Optical Frequencies” is available at https://bit.ly/3VlHGDt.