The other day I received an email inviting me to provide a short 10-minute lecture on the future of dental implant education.
The lecture is part of four 10-minute lectures at the ITI annual scientific meeting in London at the start of March and is designed to pay tribute to my friend and colleague and mentor and inspirational pioneer Jack Richardson, who died late last year.
I met Jack around 22 years ago when I attended for what turned out to be an interview, although I thought it was supposed to be a friendly dinner to see if he was happy to speak with me on what was then the two-day course for surgery and restorative dentistry as an introduction to dental implants with the Straumann and ITI dental implant system.
I passed the test with Jack (mostly because I did what I was told) and therefore I was allowed to start educating with one of the greatest pioneers of British implant dentistry that we had ever seen.
Jack started placing Straumann dental implants in the 1980’s and was surely the first in the United Kingdom ever to place an implant of that nature.
I went to watch him work at a practice in Birmingham, and he was, to say the least, unorthodox but utterly brilliant.
I watched him fit a full arch bridge back then in the early 2000’s and was dazzled by the finesse and quality of what he was doing and his understanding of how he was doing it.
By that stage, he'd probably been placing implants for 15 years, and so to pay him tribute, I need to spend some time thinking about how best to use my 10 minutes.
And now is the time to introduce you to GPT-3 if you haven't already heard about it.
If you haven’t heard about it yet, be rest assured that you will, because it is about to rock your world as will many of the new AI engines, which are now finding their way into general circulation.
You can search for GPT-3 on Google, and you can start to use it.
And, if you have a question that you would like a significant answer for, you can just put the question into GPT-3 (speak it if you like) and it will provide the answer.
And so, while I know that you think that this is like Google, it’s not.
I have seen much of GPT-3 over the past few weeks and months and in particular from Seth Godin's blog, among other places.
But what I've now seen is people talking to me about it and people showing me it as if it's never been seen before.
I took my youngest daughter and middle child, Rosie, back to University in Sheffield last Tuesday and when we got to her flat (the first time that I have ever been to her flat) we met one of her flatmates and new best friends, Lauren, who was explaining to Rosie that one of their other flatmates who's studying the same course (physiotherapy) have managed to do the large essay for the end of January, using some sort of computer programme to provide it for him.
I asked if it was GPT-3, and that seemed to strike a chord with Lauren.
He had spoken the question into GPT three and within 15 seconds it had written his essay.
Let me get that back to you again.
It took 15 seconds for AI to provide the answer to that essay that he would be able to submit at university and let's be clear, this is artificial intelligence.
The next time he asks the question, the essay answer will be better again.
Every time you ask that question, the essay answer will change therefore, you cannot check for plagiarism or any sort of copying using the standard copying software that universities look at.
The essay will not be referenced, but it does not take long to reference and although it might not be perfect, you have an outline of an essay which is fabulous, which you can then finesse over a short period of time to submit.
You don't actually need to know any of the content.
How is this likely to change the future of education?
And so, is this relevant to people entering into implant education?
Well, it's certainly relevant if you're entering into implant education and you want to do a master's but then it's relevant to anyone who wants to do a masters.
This will change the face of education because much of master’s education and degree education has gone to open book examinations or virtual examination. Those types of examinations are dead.
When it's possible to produce a reasonable or even good piece of written work merely by speaking the question into a computer, where do we go next?
Luckily for us, we are not in law or accounts or anything else, which produces words or numbers.
We work in a practical world where we have to use a practical skill in line with human experience in order to provide the best outcomes for the human beings that sit in front of us.
We have the ability to use technology to become more human (a theme which will underpin much of the writing of this blog for the next few years).
If we can use our technological tools to allow us to express more humanity, we will be the people who win, we will be the ones who come to the top.
And so, if we understand that teaching implant dentistry is all about the junction between practical skill and humanity, and all we do with technology is use it to augment the education of these skills then we will provide much better education moving forwards.
That is the pathway that our organisation for education has been on for a long time and it is the pathway that we will invest and invest and develop and develop.
I'm not sure that everybody else is on the same page as this, but you either get on the page or your page will burn, and the ashes will blow away.
The future of education is extremely bright, but there is no doubt that we're in revolutionary times.
Blog Post Number - 3328