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In searching for a good medical or dental practitioner, would you be more inclined to choose an office that claims to have adopted AI diagnostics, or would that practitioner's claim have you wondering what problems their AI might flag that possibly could over-complicate your preventive treatment plan? I can see advantages AND disadvantages. What do you think?

It depends on how AI is used, IMO. AI is probabilistic, I believe, which means it will be wrong some of the time. I'd want someone who treats AI very critically....

I remember reading a story a few months ago about a middle school teacher who gave her students an assignment of using AI to write a paper on something historical or scientific (something that can be proven as factual and not opinion). Once they turned those in, the not-in-the-know students were then randomly given their papers back to student other than themselves, and their next assignment was to find inaccuracies in the paper they were now reading.

It was an eye-opener and a strong message about how foolish it is to use AI for even factually-proven based information.

It can be a jumping off point, but I would not want my PCP using it for my health. I'd want them to use the scientifically evidence-proven information that's out there to treat me, not some general population that I might might or might not have something in common with.

I agree with both of you. I just came across a new dental practice here in my small town whose website touts his use of AI to analyze xrays and etc. for possible brewing periodontal issues in early stages or for maybe a hidden crack in a tooth root. Sounds like a good thing, catching problems early, BUT what happens if for example the tooth isn't in fact a fracture, you just have a weird bone fissure over which the xray image density looks different and AI states it could suggest fracture? What will the dentist recommend, extraction? Yikes!

Or as with EKGs, where I have learned to ignore some dire-sounding summary statements, like "heart failure," "former M.I., age unknown" after my cardiologists have dismissed those statements as flagging potential problems I don't in fact have, and were possibly caused by technical error in where the EKG leads got placed on me.

So I guess the real question becomes: to what extent does a particular medical or dental practice rely on this tool? We wouldn't know until we asked, and it made me ask myself if I really want to sign up with the new doctor. I like it when they utilize advanced scanning imagery, but....

There was just a long article on a newsfeed yesterday that was warning people in information careers how the newest versions of AI lately deployed are so much improved in accuracy that the AI is writing its own code for the next generation of itself! Implying that soon the AI will be calling the shots for the doctors....yeah, no.