AI has arrived in dentistry with extraordinary speed. With it has come excitement, investment, and marketing. Innovators belong at the table — their energy and investment move the field forward.
The profession also needs a table of its own: a place where evidence leads the conversation. If something works, we should be able to say so. And when the evidence isn’t there yet, we should be comfortable saying we don’t know.
Because in healthcare, the real test of AI cannot simply be how impressive the technology is, how much attention it gets, or how much it improves the bottom line. It has to eventually come back to something much less glamorous: does it actually help us take better care of people, and does it lead to better outcomes for our patients?
That is Human First. Patient First.
For the foreseeable future, protecting that independence will depend largely on individual members. That makes me particularly grateful to our Founding Members. You joined before there was much of a track record to judge us by. You have volunteered, made introductions, shared ideas and told us where we could do better. Please keep doing that.
If you are doing thoughtful work somewhere around dentistry and AI, particularly if you bring a perspective we don’t hear enough from, I hope you will join us.
And if you can, come to Los Angeles for our first Annual Meeting on July 9, 2027. We are planning a group visit to the Lucas Museum, which seems increasingly appropriate the more I think about it.
I keep coming back to what they did there.
Obviously, we are working on an infinitely smaller canvas. But maybe the idea isn’t so different. Create paths between people who might otherwise never meet. Bring different perspectives into the same room. Keep that room independent enough to ask difficult questions—and human enough to remember who all of this is supposed to serve.
That seems like something worth building.
If you think so too, join us.
Owais A. Farooqi, DDS, MDS, MPH, FACHE
President
American Academy of Artificial Intelligence in Dentistry®
LinkedIn: View Profile
September 2026
I’m definitely not a Star Wars geek like many of my friends, but I have somehow become a Lucas Museum fan—well, technically a Founding Member 🙂
Living in LA probably has something to do with it. I’ve watched this enormous project take shape at Exposition Park for years, but only recently started reading about the thinking behind its design.
The museum was built on what had been a huge surface parking lot separating Exposition Park from the surrounding South LA neighborhood. Instead of simply putting a spectacular building there, the designers opened the site up—with paths, gardens and public spaces that people can use without ever buying a museum ticket.
Where there was once a barrier, there are now ways through.
That made me think, in a very, very small way, about what we are trying to do with the American Academy of Artificial Intelligence in Dentistry®.
There is remarkable work happening in dental AI all over the world. Yet people working on closely related questions often don’t know one another. Different specialties, institutions, countries and parts of the profession can be looking at the same problem from very different places.
There is value in giving those paths somewhere to cross.
We are already seeing it happen. People meet through the Academy, discover common interests and sometimes go on to work together. That means something.
But there is another reason a place like this matters.
AI has arrived in dentistry with extraordinary speed. With it has come excitement, investment, and marketing. Innovators belong at the table — their energy and investment move the field forward.
The profession also needs a table of its own: a place where evidence leads the conversation. If something works, we should be able to say so. And when the evidence isn’t there yet, we should be comfortable saying we don’t know.
Because in healthcare, the real test of AI cannot simply be how impressive the technology is, how much attention it gets, or how much it improves the bottom line. It has to eventually come back to something much less glamorous: does it actually help us take better care of people, and does it lead to better outcomes for our patients?
That is Human First. Patient First.
For the foreseeable future, protecting that independence will depend largely on individual members. That makes me particularly grateful to our Founding Members. You joined before there was much of a track record to judge us by. You have volunteered, made introductions, shared ideas and told us where we could do better. Please keep doing that.
If you are doing thoughtful work somewhere around dentistry and AI, particularly if you bring a perspective we don’t hear enough from, I hope you will join us.
And if you can, come to Los Angeles for our first Annual Meeting on July 9, 2027. We are planning a group visit to the Lucas Museum, which seems increasingly appropriate the more I think about it.
I keep coming back to what they did there.
Obviously, we are working on an infinitely smaller canvas. But maybe the idea isn’t so different. Create paths between people who might otherwise never meet. Bring different perspectives into the same room. Keep that room independent enough to ask difficult questions—and human enough to remember who all of this is supposed to serve.
That seems like something worth building.
If you think so too, join us.
Owais A. Farooqi, DDS, MDS, MPH, FACHE
President
American Academy of Artificial Intelligence in Dentistry®
LinkedIn: View Profile