While a hot topic of late, it is easy to forget that the concept of artificial intelligence (AI) is not new. Early philosophers and mathematicians theorized that mechanical reasoning could one day be taught to robots, automatons, and smart machines. However, AI advancements slowed over the next few decades due to competing funding priorities, moral/ethical concerns, and the limitations of computing technology and data storage. It was not until the late 1990s/early 2000s that most of these challenges and concerns were alleviated and computer and data technologies advanced, becoming more affordable. Today, significant investment can be seen in health care-related AI with well-known companies like Microsoft, Google, and IBM heavily involved in promoting AI solutions in eye care,and smaller startups even attaining FDA-approval as standalone diagnostic technology.2-6

Some of us remember Will Robinson's loyal robotic pal in the "Lost in Space" series of the 1960s. Others will trace the sci-fi vision of intelligent autonomous machines to the day Skynet became self-aware and turned on humanity in the "Terminator" films. The term artificial intelligence (AI) and the official pursuit of intelligent machines in the scientific community actually dates to a 1956 conference of researchers from Dartmouth and IBM. Today's AI is invading our everyday lives, albeit in more subtle ways, such as digital assistants like Alexa and Siri. And now, Artificial Intelligence in dentistry has arrived! Consider a daily task that we as dentists view as routine and relatively simple: finding caries on X-rays.