Neel Kothari considers whether the dental profession is immune to the increasing use of AI across all sectors – is there anything only humans can do?
A friend recently showed me a short video clip of his children when they were younger. The video quality was excellent and his daughters were having a lovely interaction. He then went on to tell me that it was generated from a single photo using artificial intelligence (AI). In equal measures I was both amazed and terrified about what is now possible.
The Greek philosopher Heraclitus famously said: ‘The only constant in life is change.’ Whilst change is inevitable, few could have anticipated the rapid pace of change or its profound effects on society that we are now seeing. Further, it’s not entirely clear how the dental jobs market will be impacted as technology advances.
Numerous authors have suggested that AI will likely take over time consuming and repetitive tasks that are able to be automated and there is no doubt that we are already seeing significant changes in dentistry. Whether it’s AI reception assistance, dental laboratory design, manufacturing or assistance with clinical diagnostics, it seems that most companies are finding ways to incorporate AI to its benefit.
Can AI do anything better?
Now let us imagine one of the most boring tasks a dentist can do. Yes, you have guessed correctly: the six-point pocket chart. Almost no other profession would consider it reasonable to monitor a chronic disease process with such a laborious and time-consuming activity and with significant variability between clinicians. Could dose reductions in CBCT technology and intraoral scanning be combined to better monitor periodontal disease in a way that a human could never have thought possible?
Conventional wisdom may tell us that we are likely to be spared as a profession from replacement with AI because everything we do is bespoke and AI just isn’t good at that sort of thing. But I find this hard to believe, because I have seen – albeit online – videos of AI robots preparing teeth for crowns in a fraction of the time that it would take a human and, as painful as this is for me to admit, with far better accuracy.
And herein lies the issue, it isn’t just that AI has the potential to automate time consuming activities, there is real possibility that it might be able to do it better than we can.
Risk versus reward
If at this point your mind is filled with all the possible risks and things that could go wrong, believe me, I get exactly where you are coming from. Having recently bought an electric car I don’t quite know if it is more environmentally friendly than a traditional fossil fuel version, but I can say that overall it’s just better and more fun to drive.
Similarly, I can’t say that Zirconia crowns are better than cast alloy or a porcelain fused to metal ones, but I can say that they seem to fit well almost every time and tend not to break (which may or may not be a good thing). This is why they are rapidly dominating as a material of choice for dentists.
Is this science driven? No, absolutely not, but change is happening nevertheless. My sense is that much of this is driven by how likely a dentist is to try something new. I’m not criticising or trying to make a moral argument, because this is exactly how progress is made, but it’s equally true to say that there are likely to be many failures along the way. As awkward as this may sound, we are living through an age where it’s possible that the individual risk averseness of dentists could play a bigger role than science.
What can we as humans do that AI cannot?
The one thing that I think (I hope!) we do have is the ability to form relationships. It’s quite possible that our unique selling point may not be the 3D printer or milling machine in the corner, but rather an actual human picking up the phone and relating to the caller on a personal level.
I would argue that when picking a dentist, patients already know very little about our technical skills (or lack thereof) and do so based on a whole range of other factors, such as how well we communicate with them and how we make them feel when they need to visit us.
So, will AI replace us as dentists? Well, I’m not exactly sure. I’ve shifted a lot from thinking that it could never happen to perhaps it may be possible. The prospect of intraoral milling would certainly be a paradigm shift that could set the standard for drilling into teeth. I suspect that there will always be a need for dentists, but to what extent is yet to be determined.
Read more from Neel Kothari:
- Should the NHS pick up the pieces when ‘Turkey teeth’ go wrong?
- NHS tie-in for new graduates: a fair policy or desperation?
- Are dental graduates being crippled with student debt?
- Is the dental profession biased towards water fluoridation?
- Are retention fees for departing associates being abused?
