Metro Net which provides 911 dispatching to eight Orange County, CA fire departments has upgraded its Computer Aided Dispatch System (CAD). As part of this upgrade they are testing a new computer audio voice dispatch. I call him “Robo Dispatcher”. During the first day of testing Robo did not win many friends. His monotone voice is a little annoying and he was not taught the phonetic alphabet, which has since been corrected (reprogrammed). As much as I am a fan of CAD and the things it can do quickly, like know the location and status of every unit in service, it can never replace a trained human dispatcher. Meto Net has some of the best (human) dispatchers and they make very few mistakes. If we allow Robo dispatchers to do even some of the routine tasks our human dispatchers could lose their skill sets. And of course, a computerized voice could never replace the decision making and judgment skills of an experienced human dispatcher in a major emergency.