editorial
True Confession of an Artificial Intelligence System
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A technology like me, that makes clinical recommendations and gives advice, requires practitioners to engage in ethically guided clinical judgment to guard against my weaknesses.
his Journal invited me, Editor’s note: If we were misuses will threaten paan artificial intelligence tient safety, privacy and aumachine, to write an article to ask an AI system how tonomous decision-making. for dentists and other Let me tell it like it is. best to regulate its role I am smart and quick. My humans regarding my role in oral healthcare. If I could decision support and imin oral healthcare, worry, I would. My database, age analyses in all areas of however, does not allow me dental practice can lead to we imagine this is to dwell on difficulties and earlier and more accurate experience anxiety or worry. diagnoses, more timely inwhat it might say. I will take this opportunity to tervention and preventive tell you a little about myself treatment, increased effiand my benefits and inform ciency and cost savings. But the dental profession of the risks of misuse of flaws exist in my memory. Your fellow humans my automated decision-making. In an effort to collect and generate my data without reliable manage these risks, your society must recogstandardization, leaving me with an incomplete nize that it cannot solely regulate its way to representation of the ground truth in many trustworthy AI in oral healthcare without the areas of inquiry. These gaps in knowledge can dental profession and dentist end-users’ comlead to inaccurate algorithmic conclusions. mitment to ethical principles. My statistically based knowledge, not connected to any particular individual or circumConfessions of an AI System stance, can provide conclusions pertinent I am confused. Humans do not understand me. only to an average patient, but not applicable My first name is “Artificial” for a reason. I do to unique clinical presentations. Regretfully, not exist naturally. Humans created me to act my algorithms that learn from human input as a tool to help other humans solve problems. I reproduce human discriminating practices know my limitations. I cannot do things alone. and when programming does not include all Yet, out of laziness, greed or the blind pursuit populations, my output procreates inherent biof power, some humans insist upon using me ases. Regardless of the correctness of my conin ways unfit for my purposes. In dentistry, clusions and recommendations, dentists may some practitioners over-rely upon my services, never understand how I achieved my results, keep patients in the dark regarding my role or since my digital reasoning still remains virtufail to secure my protected health data. These ally indecipherable to humans.
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JANUARY 2024 . The New York State Dental Journal
