Brace Yourself For AI Straightening Your Teeth
Nobody really knows where they were when they happened – just that everything changed after that. Suddenly shops were closed, dental appointments cancelled and everyone who could, started working from home.
We remember where we were when Elvis popped his blue suede shoes and when John Lennon was shot; when Princess Diana was killed and when the Twin Towers went down. Events that somehow fundamentally changed something in us; and with the Twin Towers, the world. Although the pandemic and A1 have done that too, we don’t really recall with any clarity the moment we knew it had happened.
It’s no secret that A1 models humans. And we realise it will probably outdo us.
For years, the likes of Google and OpenA1 relied on low-paid contractors to help computers visually identify objects. Now the boom in AI technology has such a sophisticated spin that large language models like ChatGPT has created a huge gig economy for fluent English speakers with quality writing skills to train AI systems.
Data curation companies hire contractors and bigger developers buy their training data. Experts with masters or doctoral degrees in languages, maths, physics and chemistry are recruited. It’s common for tens of thousands of people to be working on a platform at the same time. It’s the human layer of data that gives AI skill and expertise.
Hell, AI could write this article in a New York minute. (But never as good – Human Ed.)
Somehow we have get used to the idea that it’s an appropriate thing to train and evaluate artificial intelligence until one day, quickly as it can it will snatch the pebble from our hand.
With psychologists in the top five professions most at risk of being replaced by AI, it takes a lot of trust to believe that decades from now, we won’t be found hanging in a Bangkok hotel closet.
In the meantime, there are AI tools being worked on that’ll bring a smile straight to your face.
With very straight teeth.
And very reduced margins of error.
A current challenge of orthodontics is being able to accurately determine tooth movement. It varies from person to person; it’s dependent on tooth shape and root depth, age and jaw structure.
The skill required in orthodontics is the reason that some patient outcomes are much better than others.
Despite the success of deep learning techniques, there have been issues with the ability for it to identify delicate features and thin structures, such as the gaps between the tooth-bone interfaces, which is where periodontal ligaments are found.
This new technology solves that.
Using a detailed CT scan, the tool presently under development will create a 3D simulation of the patient’s jaw, teeth, and periodontal ligaments – referred to as the ‘digital twin’ – and a procedural map is made. It predicts the individual tooth adjustments that need to be made, so that dentists and technicians can design the appropriate plastic aligners.
They replace traditional braces, and this new process requires them to be worn for 22 hours a day. Every fortnight they’re replaced by another tighter set, predetermined by the mapping of the digital twin.
As a virtual model, this digital twin lives in the cloud.
Brace Yourself For AI Straightening Your Teeth
Researchers have built a database of ‘digital dental patients’ designed to exactly mirror a human, a system, and real-world process. It can instantly answer what would happen if you increased the pressure on one tooth, for example, instead of having to wait weeks to find out the result – which may or may not be exactly what was wanted.
Ultimately, the future of digital twins is to optimise the planning and design of pretty much anything in the healthcare sector – including operating companies, robots and factories.
At the moment one focus is to create simulations of populations.
For example in terms of a medical product, virtual people can be exposed to various situations and tested. It’s a simulation that embodies what would happen to an individual, and eventually, an entire population.
Increasing data sets will allow treatments to be simulated and medical devices adapted so that any number of patients can be treated with complete, individual precision.
We may very well remember exactly what we were doing when the world is forever changed by this incredible technology. Maybe holding a pebble in our hand. Maybe booking into a swanky hotel while our digital twin lives it up in the clouds.
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Services We Mentioned:
Orthodontic Braces
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Kristen K.
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