{ "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register", "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/dentists-general/", "methodology": "https://cookedindex.com/methodology", "notice": "Verdicts are re-examined as evidence accumulates. Re-fetch before relying on this; the page above always carries the current score.", "scored_at": "2026-08-11", "model": "claude-opus-5", "occupation": { "title": "Dentists, General", "soc_code": "29-1021", "category": "Healthcare", "us_employment": 124390, "median_annual_wage": 170950 }, "verdict": "SAFE", "risk_resistance": 85, "contested": false, "near_boundary": false, "dimensions": { "task_resistance": 15, "embodiment": 19, "liability_shield": 19, "trust_premium": 16, "judgment_accountability": 16 }, "reasoning": { "task_resistance": "Caries detection on bitewings, periapical bone-loss measurement, and treatment-plan drafting are the tasks AI already does well, but crown margin preparation, extracting a fractured root, locating a calcified canal, and adjusting occlusion by feel with articulating paper are the bulk of chair time and are why this sits at 15 rather than 18 — the imaging and documentation half of the day is genuinely compressible.", "embodiment": "Every billable procedure happens with instruments inside a live airway — a patient who gags, bleeds, moves, or reacts to lidocaine mid-drill — and the operating field shifts with tongue, saliva and mandible position, which is uncontrolled in a way a surgical robot on a fixed pelvis is not.", "liability_shield": "State board licensure, DEA registration for prescribing, and a malpractice policy in your own name mean a paresthesia after a lower third molar extraction or a perforated furcation is your negligence claim, not the practice's software vendor's.", "trust_premium": "Patients tolerate needles and burs because they have sat in your chair for years and recall bases much of general dentistry on returning families, but a meaningful share of production is walk-in emergencies, insurance-network assignment, and DSO-employed rotations where the patient came for the office, not you — hence 16 rather than 19.", "judgment_accountability": "Deciding whether a cracked, deeply restored molar gets a crown, a root canal, or extraction with implant referral, and whether an anxious cardiac patient on anticoagulants should be treated in-office at all, are calls with no protocol answer, radiographs that support both options, and consequences you carry for a decade." }, "rationale": "The core of general dentistry is millimeter-scale work inside a moving, sensitive human mouth — drilling and filling caries, extractions, crown prep, root canals, administering local anesthetic — which no current robotic system performs unsupervised. AI already reads bitewing radiographs for caries and bone loss better than the median practitioner and drafts treatment plans, insurance narratives, and clinical notes, so the diagnostic and paperwork layers compress. State dental licensure plus personal malpractice liability means a licensed human owns every treatment decision and every signature.", "outlook": "Ten years out, dentists still drill and extract, but AI runs diagnosis support, coding, and front-office work — practices get leaner in staff and the dentist's day skews further toward procedures.", "what_would_raise_it": { "levers": [ { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "State dental boards explicitly codifying that AI caries-detection and treatment-planning output is advisory only, with the licensed dentist retaining sole diagnostic responsibility — the pattern in ADA policy statements and in board guidance already issued on teledentistry supervision; also a board rule requiring an in-person licensed dentist of record for any AI-guided or robot-assisted procedure (e.g., Yomi-class haptic systems, Perceptive's autonomous crown prep trials).", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 1 }, { "dimension": "judgment_accountability", "change": "As AI takes over radiographic reads and note-writing, the dentist's remaining day concentrates on contested calls: watch-vs-restore on incipient lesions, extract-vs-endo, treating medically complex or anticoagulated patients, and overriding AI overtreatment flags that insurers and state AGs are already scrutinizing (DSO overdiagnosis suits). If payers begin requiring a named dentist attestation for AI-flagged treatment plans, ownership of ambiguity rises.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 2 }, { "dimension": "task_resistance", "change": "Two-tier shift: if imaging interpretation, insurance narratives, and charting are fully absorbed, the residual job is almost entirely chairside operative work plus contested judgment — raising the share of the day AI cannot do, even as absolute hours fall.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 2 }, { "dimension": "trust_premium", "change": "Patient willingness to pay specifically for a human operator is already near-ceiling for invasive intraoral procedures; a visible adverse-event record from an autonomous prep system would harden it, but there is little headroom to score.", "plausibility": "unlikely", "would_add": 1 } ], "ceiling_note": "At 85 the constraint is arithmetic, not institutional — embodiment and liability are already near maximum. The real risk to this occupation is headcount and per-procedure revenue (AI-driven hygienist/therapist scope expansion, DSO throughput models), which this register does not measure." }, "adjudication": null, "employment_history": { "points": [ { "y": 2017, "emp": 110400, "wage": 151440 }, { "y": 2018, "emp": 113000, "wage": 151850 }, { "y": 2019, "emp": 110730, "wage": 155600 }, { "y": 2020, "emp": 95920, "wage": 158940 }, { "y": 2021, "emp": 108680, "wage": 160370 }, { "y": 2022, "emp": 120740, "wage": 155040 }, { "y": 2023, "emp": 121640, "wage": 166300 }, { "y": 2024, "emp": 113490, "wage": 172790 }, { "y": 2025, "emp": 124390, "wage": 170950 } ], "from": 2017, "to": 2025, "change_pct": 12.7, "comparable_from": 2019, "spans_soc_revision": true }, "pivots": [], "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms" }