Shaping the Future of Smart Dentistry: From Artificial Intelligence (AI) to Intelligence Augmentation (IA)

Abstract

Digitization is the emerging process in the current transformation of industry. Understanding the role and socio-economic consequences of digitalization is crucial for the way technology is being deployed in each sector. One of the affected sectors is dentistry. This study highlights the current advances and challenges in integrating and merging artificial intelligence (AI), intelligence augmentation (IA), and machine learning (ML) in dentistry. We conduct a comparative analysis to give an overview of which technology is being currently deployed and what role IA and AI will play in dentistry, as AI plays an assistive role in advancing human capabilities. We find that challenges range from AI finding its way into routine medical practice to qualitative challenges of retrieving adequate data input. Other challenges lie in the yet unanswered questions of liability in how to reduce deployment costs of new technology. Given these challenges, we provide an outlook of how future technology can be deployed in daily-life dentistry and how robots and humans will interact, given the current technology developments. The aim of this paper is to discuss the future of dentistry and whether it is AI or IA conquering the modern dentistry era.

Where Is the Artificial Intelligence Applied in Dentistry? Systematic Review and Literature Analysis

“…Therapeutic dentistry takes advantage of AI in different fields, mainly in image-based automatic detection of diseases and other diagnosis-support systems [ 76 ]. Detecting the dental caries in periapical radiographs can be performed with the help of a deep-learning-based CNN (convolutional neural network) algorithm [ 31 , 32 , 79 , 109 , 110 , 111 ]. This can be useful to enhance dental caries detection and diagnosis in clinical dental practice [ 76 ].…”

“…Their goal is to enhance the efficiency and quality of delivered services. AI implementations are invisible algorithms in software tools in the majority of these processes [ 5 , 6 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 ]. They often overlap various dental specialties and categorizations.…”

Revolutionary Dentistry through Blockchain Technology

“…The ongoing human endeavour to shape and utilise a more innovative world, which has resulted in interminably increasing advancements in all kinds of technologies, will, of course, have profound modifying impacts on various healthcare fields, including dentistry, undoubtedly maximising efficiency in this sector [1]. Technology's infiltration into healthcare generally provides a more enabling environment for education and knowledge exchange, as well as promotes personalised healthcare information based on the needs of the individual patient [2].…”

The Effectiveness of Semi-Automated and Fully Automatic Segmentation for Inferior Alveolar Canal Localization on CBCT Scans: A Systematic Review

“…[ 1 , 10 ]. Moreover, AI applications in dentistry are rapidly growing [ 11 ]. They are used for caries detection and diagnosis [ 12 ], oral cancer screening [ 13 , 14 ], improvement of brushing method [ 15 ], management of dental fear [ 16 ], automatic cleaning, shaping, and filling of the root canal [ 17 ], differential diagnosis, treatment planning, and detection of anatomical structure on dental radiographic data [ 18 ].…”