Fire Tech Brief: 5 Tips for Fire Service Artificial Intelligence Prompts

While at FireFusion, there were a lot of great conversations related to the future of fire service technology, ethical concerns for the use of artificial intelligence (AI), and even real-life examples of robotics being implemented to save lives.  During one of my sessions, I had a reader come up and ask, “AI is great, but we just use it as a glorified Google, how do you get better results from it?”  While there are a ton of classes online and videos to help you maximize your return with AI, I wanted to put together the top five tips for fire service AI prompts to start the learning process.

Be clear and specific

Generative AI systems are a personal assistant in many cases but should be treated like the newest probie in the station. Your instructions need to be clear and specific. Your prompt needs to include things like the topic, goal, tone, and output type you want to produce.

• Write a 200-word professional email that shows empathy in response to an angry citizen with a complaint about the noise our fire engines make responding to a call. The response should emphasize our desire to serve the community while also maintaining the safety of our personnel and reflect any laws that govern our use of warning devices in an intersection.
• Create a 12-15 slide PowerPoint presentation that outlines the top ten line of duty deaths for the fire service and includes a title slide, presenter introduction slide, summary of topics to be covered, and a question slide at the end.
• Draft a policy on social media for my fire department that addresses key concerns such as who is authorized to use official department social media, prohibitions with examples of things that cannot be personally or professionally shared on social media, and reference any laws that impact this policy. 

Provide context for your questions

Has anyone ever walked into a room and asked you a question without context? The answer I give someone often differs if I understand the situation surrounding their question. AI tools are the same way. Each session you open is like a new conversation and you can give it details before asking it to create something. Share who you are, the role you play, and what the output is intended to accomplish. Looking at our prompt above, you could preface it with something like this: I am a fire chief who just received a certified letter from an angry citizen. I have had multiple conversations with this individual and they are also coming to our commission meetings. This person lives right next to the first intersection that our responding crews must go through every time they respond to an emergency with lights and sirens.

Give it a role or position

As a company or chief officer, I often tried to see things from an unfamiliar perspective to facilitate better communication. While we are fairly fixed in our roles and positions, thus perspective, AI can assume any role that it is assigned. Using prompts that set that expectation is easy to do, and the best part is that you can change that role mid conversation if you do not like the direction its responses are going. Here are some examples:

• Act as a leader of a public safety organization drafting an empathetic email to improve relations with community members.
• Act as a leadership coach who loves to build collaborations and improve teamwork.
• Act as a retired fire chief who is preparing to give a leadership presentation.

Iterate, refine, and clarify

If you treat AI as a glorified internet search engine you will get cookie cutter responses that are not the right tone, provide the right information, and ultimately fail to sound like you are the author. Each conversation session is a new line of thinking for the AI assistant. If you follow the other steps above, you will get a better initial response, but you can tailor that response based on your feedback. You can also use it for significant edits or to clarify the various steps of a major project or request. Essentially, you can work with your AI assistant in a more conventional manner. Imagine having a personal assistant that drafts your email response… most of us would read it and say things like, that seems a little harsh, make it sound more empathetic or that fails to explain why we must use our sirens. In any case, have a conversation with the AI to help improve your product. Here are some examples:

• Adjust the response to be more concise.
• Elaborate on this process and give me step-by-step instructions on how to do it.
• Pretend like I do not know anything about creating a post-incident survey / after action report and ask me questions one at a time to help clarify what I am looking to have created.
• This information needs to be condensed into one hundred words without losing any of the main sentiment or detail.

Verify and adapt

AI tools are just that - a tool. The product is going to have your name attached to it, so it is imperative that you trust but verify. Always check for facts, tone, and accuracy. Depending on which version of the generative AI tool you are using, it may not have up to date or realistic information. I learned this the hard way when I attempted to use AI to help me build my fantasy football team. It was based on my request from data that was almost a year old. I had the best 2024 fantasy football team, unfortunately it was 2025. All jokes aside, especially in a world that can be overcritical of government officials, it is important to make sure you are using these tools to maximize your time not replacing the human element.

Conclusion

AI tools are powerful time saving innovations that are quickly gaining attention from everyone. Even if you do not jump in and start to use it, believe it when I say your politicians, municipal leadership teams, and community members are embracing it. Understanding that AI can be a tool that levels the playing field, our positions as the subject matter experts in our field will not be enough to defend against people who use this tech. Learn to embrace it and use it to get better results. Just like every other tool in the proverbial toolbox, take a class, and learn how to use it properly. Until then, use these tips and start seeing your AI assistant improve the output you are looking for help with.