If you’re of the opinion that the introduction of haptic technologies, gloves and visors etc. into dentistry and surgery wasn’t going to happen soon (and by soon I mean the next 20 years) then I think you would be deluded.
Artificial intelligence, robots and virtual reality will change everything in every single industry for every single worker.
If you haven’t yet seen the bricklayer machines that are now springing up in major building sites, I would advise you to Google it. If you haven’t seen the stuff about pilotless airlines, let alone pilotless motorcars then you must have been living under a rock.
Basically the essence of this is that everything that can be will become commoditised and as soon as it becomes commoditised it becomes basically free.
The first time they laid a communications pipe across the Atlantic from the UK and Germany through the USA the cost of use of one of the wires was extraordinarily expensive. The companies that laid the initial pipe for a short while was the most valuable company in the world, even though it had only cost them $750,000,000 to lay the pipes.
Having seen this, obviously, other companies spent $750,000,000 to lay pipes that were more efficient with more cable and more fibres, therefore reducing the cost of hiring a fibre because the pipe could carry more and they could make more money.
Eventually the cost of carrying data through the pipe was next to 0 when previously it had been millions.
The intellectual property (IP) we own as dentists is not the placing of a dental implant (not past a particular level anyway). It’s the ability to discuss and explain to a patient what the benefits and disadvantages are, to work with them to create a solution for them and to reassure them that you’re able to execute that with expertise (It’s to allow them to trust us and give us permission to do so).
If you ever thought you were doing something different in dentistry then you were wrong.
Ultimately we will return to the scene in Logan’s Run were he has plastic surgery to change his face from a robot but it will be a while yet before the artificial intelligence will be able to do a consultation and ultimately that will be the last thing left for us to be good at.
Blog post number: 1413
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