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> there's some things a human dentist does that I doubt this does - early detection of oral or skin cancer on the face being one of them

I'm sure this can happen, but that's different to every dentist doing it. And a dentist doing harder to automate stuff while the 15 minutes go on instead of 2 hours means way more patients treated in the same time period, which means costs can hopefully come way down for some dentistry.

It's definitely what I'd like to see for the future, in the same way that calculators improved the capability and throughput of professional mathematicians; as a tool that assists to enhance and augment delivery of a service.

CNC milling already exists for crown prep. The drilling of the tooth itself is not a long operation. The reason that a crown is split into 2 sessions is (depending on your local health board's practice guide) to ensure that the tooth is still viable for a crown; bleeding to stop, inflammation to go down.

This revolutionises nothing... But it is a step towards a revolution. It can only be a good thing. However, in the same way that there's technically a lab-grown hamburger out there, it's not going to be commonplace for a while.

I should add that my perspective is based in secondhand UK dental experience; in a hospital setting this would be used to improve care. In a private practice I have no doubt that it wouldn't affect the price handed to the customer.

> In a private practice I have no doubt that it wouldn't affect the price handed to the customer.

Why not?

> there's rarely a good reason to not have an X-ray

I'd much rather have a 90% detection rate without an X-ray than 100% with. Destists are very trigger-happy with X-rays, in part because of the extra billing, but mostly because it makes their job easier and prevents mistakes.

The estimates of the hidden costs of radiation risk are tentative at best. Some people have inherently higher risk and many are not aware of it. Either way, it can take years or decades before the effect plays out. By then, no one is going to implicate the original providers who pushed for an elective X-ray.

Also, note that not all ionizing radiation is alike. The exact spectra are different and the exposure intervals are very different, so the comparisons to environmental sources don't necessarily hold.

Absolutely correct, and my examples given are unsubstantiated and anecdotal at best; I'm not in the medical physics field.

Honestly, I'd take both. If standard light imaging is 99% efficient then it adds additional triage and diagnostic capability.

As regards the billing situation, that may partially be a locale issue rather than an all-dentists thing, but even within the UK it's disappointingly nonstandard and subject to manipulation by the dentist.

Despite all that, you say that X-rays are pushed because it "prevents mistakes". And my response would be along the lines of "well... yeah..." because a mistake turns a simple filling into a more complex (and expensive) operation that could cost a tooth and £x,000.

Speaking from personal experience, if the dentist wasn't concerned about anything on my teeth and I didn't ask for an x-ray, I didn't get one.

I keep seeing this template response/attitude but I think it’s generally flawed. Here’s why.

You judge a prototype / instance of a technological field that’s otherwise in full swing, cranking on releasing next version long before you see the current one

You assume this will be isolated from the rest of advancements, but in reality once you have the mechanics to automate imagery and drilling 100x more technologies can be composed. Memory in particular is something tech has always surpassed humans.

The combination of these two, particularly in the context of AI is much faster than most people can perceive.

So saying yes but x, is irrelevant for the most part.

I’m optimistic about AI but if you know anything about dental procedures and then look at what this does, it’s the simplest and done in extremely filtered patients. While in 100 years there will be a robot that can do most cases but it is very justified to write this off in the near future and in the current form.

A reasonable take, but one that I don't think lessens my point.

I can't speak to the other responses from which you've identified this yes-but-x template, and can speak really only from the 2 bits of knowledge I have: IT/infrastructure stuff is my primary knowledge, and my SO's dental training and practice, which is not "my" knowledge, but from this I have access to more knowledge than would the average person.

Now, the IT stuff. Automation has come a long way and quickly, but if I break something, it's just a service. Worst case scenario a customer can't buy something, or maybe a couple thousand customers can't. Big deal, one a minute, etc. I don't need to preach on this, I'm sure.

The medical field is significantly slower to adopt new practices, with the reasoning that their customers' custom is not an item in a cart, it's their health or life. New technology comes in slowly, with trials for wide population application taking decades in some cases. The stakes are so much higher that safety demands caution.

This does not of course mean never. I've said this in another reply also, but I think tooling like this augments service delivery at the very least (provided it meets safety standards) and could be the start of a boom of up-tooling practitioners. And I will be surprised if I see one in the flesh before 2050.

The problem with your observation is this is what can be done TODAY with a robot. Current dentists are indeed safe as you point out.

But after 20 years of iteration it might be able to do most or all of what you describe. This means that my 8 year old should maybe not, when he grads from college in the future, decide to go to dental school and rack up $200K of debt (actually that’s conservative) for a profession that won’t disappear but will likely face tremendous downward pressure (ability to perform more operations==fewer dentists needed==greater competition among dentists). And that is the problem.

Ya my dentist checks for cancers not just by sight but by touching neck/throat.

He also noticed I had a breathing issue.

Pass.

For those who are worried about radiation from X-rays I always recommend:

https://xkcd.com/radiation/

And since that was published, the widespread uptake of digital dental X-rays brought the dental x-ray dose down to the (roughly, depending on how you count, how many, etc) 1 uSv range.

I've been much happier about dental X-rays since they went digital. Substantially improves the diagnostic value to radiation ratio.