988 Worker here.
Every single time someone asks me what we can do to fight the mental health epidemic in the U.S. and the rising suicide rates, I always always tell them the keys are workers rights, affordable housing, a healthcare system that doesn't suck, all of this shit that the person asking typically doesn't want.
988 is not using any AI in conversations with callers to my knowledge. I know that some branches are looking at implementing AI for training purposes, to perhaps give more realistic simulation calls for trainers, but at no point should anybody calling 988 needing help encounter an AI. For the chat platform, I know that the messaging system has some automatic questions that it asks everyone at the very start of the conversation, but it's a machine in the classic sense, and is not AI. Chat/Texters should not be encountering AI either.