Education for digital technology in dental science and engineering

Abstract

The hypothesis that machines will have intelligence surpassing that of humans in 2045 (Singularity) has been proposed, and human society is undergoing a major transformation due to the rapid development of artificial intelligence and machine technology. In order to cope with this era, programming education has been made compulsory in elementary schools since 2020. It is expected that all Japanese citizens will be required to acquire programming skills. The most urgent issue is how to develop human resources who can adapt to the coming era, not only in the dental field but all professionals. Solutions to this problem are：to learn a highly versatile programming language, understand the basics of mechanization technology based on this language, learn how to handle three-dimensional data, and understand the basic structure of artificial intelligence. This paper describes the kind of information technology that dentists, dental technicians, and dental hygienists, who will be involved in dental care in the near future, should be familiarized with, based on the current contents of information processing education.