"Overhyped OR Gamechanger? Both?" — AI and the Future of Dentistry (feat. Conner Ludlow)

Dan Brian and Conner Ludlow, founder of Annie, an AI assistant for dental practice front desks, discuss the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in dentistry. They explore the (possibly?) overhyped expectations surrounding AI, its practical applications in dental practices, and how tools like Annie can enhance efficiency without replacing human staff. Connor shares insights on the future of AI in the dental field and emphasizes the importance of viewing AI as a tool to augment human capabilities rather than a replacement. Don't miss this must-listen conversation for dentists who want to position their practices at the cutting edge of innovation and patient experience. Get more resources and connect with Conner via the show notes.

Transcript

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All right, welcome back to the Dental Domination Podcast. Excuse me, terrible start. My name is Dan Brian and I am the co-founder of DentalScapes for an online marketing agency specifically for dental practices. Not here, of course, as always to talk about that today. Today, I'm really excited, not only because we have a really special guest that knows a lot about this subject, but also the subject itself. We're going to be talking a lot about AI today and artificial intelligence, of course, is getting a lot of play in the media, in the workplace, and dentistry is no exception. And so we're going to talk a little bit about applications for AI, responsible usage of AI. We're going to get into all of it here in the minutes ahead. But before we do that, I want to introduce Connor Ludlow. Connor is the founder and CEO over at Annie. Annie is what they call your intelligent front desk assistant, and it's an AI powered tool that is billed as quote, your front desk's new best friend, which is pretty awesome. All looking for new best friends. But in any case, I know Connor, you don't want to get into that a whole lot upfront. We'll talk about Annie a little bit more at the end here, but. I wanted to just hear in your own words a little bit more about your background. If you can introduce yourself to folks, how the hell did you get involved in this space? And also, I'm going to, I'm going to tee you up here. You say something kind of crazy, or at least that strikes folks as a little bit off in today's, you know, over over buzzing society when it comes to AI, you say that AI is actually over height. and yet here you are building a business. that is based on AI for dentistry. And so I want to talk about that for sure. But if you could just give us a few minutes about your background, who you are, where you're coming from, and we'll get into it. Yeah, no, I'm excited to be here. I think, you know, diving into the answers to that question, I mean, really, I'm just a nerd. You know, I didn't think that I would end up, know, here in dentistry, but I went to school to be a software engineer, you know, software engineering, I guess you could say is my true trade. You know, that's where my skill set lies. Yeah, I'm better at keyboards myself. I always say you don't want sharp things in my hands. Yeah. No, I totally get you. I love the software engineering side. I'm definitely a nerd. When we talk about AI, I'll try not to nerd out too much about that. But I got into dentistry, actually, I was the CTO of a dental call center. So I came in from the software engineering side, not necessarily with the intention to get into dentistry. We were building a fun business and that was kind how I got my feet wet. learn the ropes a little bit around what goes on in this space. And I ended up spending some time as the COO of that call center, so a little bit more on the operations side. And that's really where I feel like I truly got to know dentistry and got to work with some of our customers and work hands on with dentists and see what they face in their every day. And now at the end of We're basically building, kind like what you said, your front desk best friend. We know that staffing is really hard. And so we are building an AI employee that's not meant to take over the front desk, but really be there as backup to help augment some of those tasks that can be repetitive and time consuming. Yeah, and one of the things that I know you've mentioned about it is just in missed calls alone. You know, the average dental practice is missing something like or losing something like 100 K a year. And if you only had a backup plan to handle those those missed calls that in and of itself is worth it. And I know that Annie is doing much more than that, but really cool stuff. And I want to talk more about that at the end. But let's get into it. If you don't mind, you say that AI is overhyped. and that is an unconventional take, I would say right now. I think I know where you're going with this, but I want to hear what you mean by that and specifically what does that mean for the dental industry? Yeah. I mean, we hear about AI everywhere right now, right? Like it seems like in the news, you know, anytime there's a release on a business site, it's AI everything. And I think, you know, over the past couple of years, we've seen companies just all of sudden you'd pull up their website and it would say AI company, you know, and you didn't even know beforehand that they were using AI or an AI product. And it just seems like it's getting thrown in our face all the time. so... I think that the analogy I like to use, there's this guy named Amara. He was a guy that studied technology. And he came up with his own little law. It's called Amara's Law, if you ever want to look it up. But the whole premise of the law is that we tend to overstate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect of a technology in the long run. And he actually created like a little chart. And it might seem really cheesy. But his whole chart, he calls it the peak of inflated expectations. But the idea is that a new technology comes out and your expectations just skyrocket. And after they skyrocket, what we see is a cycle where we don't necessarily live up to the expectations. We kind of start to come back down into what he called the... that why I haven't gotten my flying car yet? It may be, it may be. Yeah, you know, we're still waiting on those. Well, and you know, I think that's a really good example. So, I think one of the funny things about AI is that we've seen it before, you know, like there's a lot of new technology that comes out and it's like, cool. Yeah, that's, that's crazy. But with AI, we've kind of seen it in movies. We've seen it in books, you know, and a lot of different things for many years. And so. Your comment right there, I think is the perfect example of that. Like I remember when I was telling my dad that I was going into, you know, what we were doing with Annie and he asked like, have you not seen the terminating? You know? So we've kind of seen it in movies, which I think is part of that, you know, if we call it that, you know, really big kind of skyrocketing expectations, I think that is part of Yeah, yeah, cool. So, you know, OK, I understand the expectations game here. I understand why you know you're saying that AI is overhyped. That said, there is still a lot of practical application for AI right now in the dental field. What are just a few of those use cases that you're seeing right now that you find especially promising in? Yeah. Well, I think that right there, when I say AI is overhyped, I don't want that to get misinterpreted as AI sucks or AI is not going to have potential to save people a ton of time. I think that the problem with the hype is that it almost masks that question that you just asked. We go straight to the flying cars and the termometer and the idea of a one-person business where sales is automated, support is automated. that everything is automated. And we kind of skip like the steps that it takes to get there, you know? Yeah, like, I mean, I'm sure you've probably used this a ton, but like, I tell people all the time, chat GPT, like great starting spot. If you're just, if you're hearing about AI, if you're seeing all of the hype, pull up chat GPT and just start sending things through. Just super simple. Like I did a presentation the other day at the Utah dental event. And, you know, we threw up a slide of a couple of prompts. So prompts are, know, what you put into something like chat GPT to get an answer back. we put up a couple of prompts or questions about writing blog articles to help out with SEO. And the whole premise of those prompts was, Hey, I just want to increase my SEO. I'm a dentist, not a marketer. What are some articles that, may have some good keywords that would just be a good. you know, a little outline that I could follow for the next six months. And it spat out 30 different articles, you know, the titles. We then had another, uh, little prompt or question that we can ask the AI that says, want to, you know, I want to pick one of these, create an outline for the article and tell me what I need to highlight to get the benefits of the SEO. And we had people pulling out their phones and taking pictures. And I think that people sometimes don't realize that even something as simple as just chat GPT. And chat GBT is really hyped too, but I feel like sometimes we don't just realize like, this is a tool. Like it's literally like a calculator or the internet where it's a tool that's practical that you can use right now. Yeah, 100%. Well, and it's interesting too. You know, we're talking about flying cars and, you know, massive expectations. And even with chat GPT, like you said, and I fundamentally agree that it is an incredibly valuable tool on a content development side of things on an SEO side of things. you know, at dental scapes, for instance, you know, we're leveraging AI for online marketing and it's, it's important and it actually allows us to do better things at scale and spend our clients money more effective. But you know that said anything that AI is generating at least now at least today the world that we live in needs to have human eyes on it needs to be edited needs to be fact-checked because I'll tell you what I have seen chat GPT crank out some pretty insane factoids about say root canals contrary to popular belief at least in chat GPT's world you know you don't go in through the forehead or or whatever it might be So you've got to be vetting this content. The tools are amazing. But at the same time, I absolutely subscribe to your theory that we just we can't afford to overhype it yet at this point or buy in so completely that we're blinded to the limitations that do still exist. Yeah. Do you remember, I don't know if you remember when Google first came out with their AI search results, you know how sometimes now in Google it'll... it like the search generative experience or whatever. Yeah. Do you remember when it was, you know, telling people to eat rocks or, you know, give a recipe? remember seeing some stuff like that. Yeah, yeah, it's bad. Yeah. So I think that, you you've nailed it right on the head. Like when I use chat GPT or any of these AI marketing tools to help out with writing an article, you know, usually from my side, it's first brainstorming. Hey, I have this idea in my head. I just can't get it down to an outline. Can you help me craft an outline? And it's great for those types of things. And I'm reading over it. I'm seeing what it is. And sometimes I'll even say, just generate the basic article. I'll copy and paste that into my text editor and then I'll go in and change the words. I'll replace it with my words or I'll rewrite a paragraph to fit my style. But from like a brain block side of things, when you get kind of those mental blocks, I feel like it's so helpful in those. Yeah, yeah, 100%. And you know what's really fascinating is, you know, I, you know, I'm a, I'm a journalist by background way back in the day, actually, I have a communications degree. My undergrad was in English. you know, language is my jam and I love to write and, you know, I've experimented many times with putting in my own draft of things and asking chat GPT to spice it up or make it better or whatever. It's a very humbling experience. I must say. does a really great job, but you know, I think the future of AI and content development is such that humans will always at least maybe, maybe always, they will maintain some degree of editorial control or, or that sort of thing. think the, those that used to be copywriters for instance, are now going to lean more heavily in the copy editing side of things. And so it's, it's a rapidly evolving place for sure. But, yeah, the. what they call hallucinations, they're real. Yeah. Well, and I think if you go back to, you know, let's just look in the past at other technological advancements, you know, let's look at cars. Like when cars came out, what did that do to travel and decreasing the amount of time that it took you to get from point A to point B? You know, let's look at the calculator and what that allowed in terms of, you know, being able to do math or do, you know, we extend the calculator to T wasn't going 85 down the highway. That's for sure. No, but over time, technology tends to make things more efficient, tends to make things more accessible. And the way that it does that, I think, goes perfectly into what you're saying. It's that these are tools, right? When the internet came out, it was a tool that allowed us to communicate quicker or send data in different ways and open so many doors for new things that we could do. it was still a tool that enabled that. I think that when I... man, you remember those few dental practices that had websites in the late 90s? I do. I do. The visitor counter that just kind of kept scrolling, the flashing red lights. yeah, love it. Yeah, I mean, it's funny to look back at those types of things and realize where it is. And I think that's, you know, to your point about humans, like I think that's where we're at is people look at AI right now as a silver bullet. I think we need to look at it. You know, when I say AI is overhyped, what I'm saying is that I do think that this is an incredible technology and I work in it every day and there are days that it blows my mind. And I do think long run, it's going to be an incredible advancement for us. But I think that what we need to do is look at it like it's a tool. when we approach it, approach it in that way. And I think that's what you're saying too of if it's a tool that can help me as a writer produce content twice as quick or three times as quick, that's not replacing me as a writer. It's just helping me be much more efficient. You know, for us, when we write code, we are more efficient at writing code now because there are certain things that we can have the AI write for us. And we still have to go in and make sure that it works and there's no bugs, but it's undeniably more efficient for us. And I think that's the mindset that, you know, with doing things like this, I hope that people catch onto is you don't need to feel intimidated. You don't need to feel like you're behind. I think when you start jumping in, you realize like, this is a tool and there are areas that it legitimately helps me out in. And there are also areas where maybe it's not fully baked yet, but it'll come. And as long as I'm diving in and getting used to the tool. I'll be able to pick that up as it advances. Yeah. And you mentioned, I mean, there are days where your mind is just blown and you know, it is happening in dentistry as well. You know, we talked about content development, but practice management systems, you know, other technologies are already integrating AI or have integrated AI in dentistry. You know, as you know, some dentists are leveraging AI for interpreting radiographs. They're, they're using it for measurements. They're doing even they're even using it as sort of an assistant in treatment planning. It's really incredible where it is and I think for sure where in the next two, three, four, five years it's going to go. But to that point, know, beyond content development, beyond SEO that you just talked about, and I love that experiment that you put on at that last conference, what other opportunities right now do you see with AI in the dental practice? Well, I think, I think AI, you know, in and of itself, it's a funny word because when chat GPT came out, all of sudden we started saying AI is here and AI this AI that. And I think that a lot of times people, when they say AI, like are really just referring to chat GPT and those types of technologies. I mean, you mentioned the radiographs, you mentioned some of these other tools that are out there. There's so many subsets of AI that kind of get glossed over because I think that parallel is kind of with chat GPT. But you've got the second opinion software is they use AI to highlight areas of concern. You've got image generating software. I'm sure you guys play around with this from the marketing side too. You need a quick picture for a blog article? Sweet, you can get AI to generate that picture. And so there's so many little subsets of things that, again, they're tools. They're not this like silver bullet, but websites that you can go to, are... programs you can download on your computer that just in the same way that we've had software for a while now, these are other softwares that will go in and help you save time. Yeah, and you know, it's funny, you there's just so many, the list goes on, like you said, and these things have existed now for years and we've just not called them AI, of course, like you were saying. And was talking to her name is Dr. Amanda Wilson yesterday on the podcast. We were talking about, you know, opportunities for integrating ortho into your practice, for instance, but within, you know, the Invisalign space, for instance, with these 3D scanners now, you're able to actually project what a patient's new smile is going to look like on their face specifically. I mean, these are all forms of AI or at least AI using technologies, whatever, that we've used for a long time. We've all been wildly impressed with, but we maybe didn't know what to call Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think your point that you made was, spot on of, know, there's all these technologies that are kind of AI that we just haven't called AI. And now that the term is fancy, you know, we kind of lump a lot of stuff under it, but you know, the analogy I always use fast, think of Google maps or Apple maps and how crazy it is that it'll reroute you if there's a crash 20 miles ahead of you and you tell you what, my printed out MapQuest map that was sitting on my passenger side seat on many a road trip would not reroute me. Exactly. Like I, you know, I think that those are, I think that's the big thing that I hope people will start to, you know, get some confidence in is we've mentioned probably five or six things over the course of this talk so far where, know, you mentioned that that software that overlays somebody, somebody's new smile, like to do some of those things, all you have to do is go and just get started. You just kind of have to jump in and it's not, it's not that it's saying It's a robot now that's going to do the orthodontics for you. It's just, you know, this is a tool in the same way that Google maps was a tool for us. And at some point you downloaded Google maps and you typed in that first address and you trusted it. You followed the directions. And I think that's what a lot of it is, is, you know, use chat GPT, use some of these image generating softwares. And even if your answer sucks or if your image isn't any good, You know, the fact that you start to get your feet wet, I think is huge. And I think the other part of the hype is that it makes you feel like you're behind. And I think that makes you feel like you have to catch up. I think we're still in the, you know, let's say either the end of the first inning or beginning of the second inning in terms of AI. so anybody that gets in now is going to be just fine. Yeah, and I think at the beginning of any new technological advancement like AI or the many things that fall within the realm of AI, there can be some natural hesitancy. You just mentioned you maybe feel like you're behind a lot of people in today's workforce are worried about being replaced. I can tell you they have started testing robotic devices that can do minor fillings and can do, you know, I think I read that they're even experimenting with root canals with robotic technology, but that ship has not fully sailed yet by any stretch of the imagination. And at the same time, we're human beings, dentists like anyone else are going to adapt. And so maybe 20 years from now, every hygienist will be a robot, but guess what? You, and probably your human hygienists are going to be overseeing that operation. And you'll just be doing something in a different way that maybe you can't imagine today, but we'll be adapting. We'll be leveraging it however we see fit. It's not all doom and gloom, I think, at the same time. Yeah, yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. I do feel like there's a little bit of that doom and gloom around AI when it comes to the job side of thing. You know, obviously it's we're still early, so there's a lot that I think can develop. But I generally feel optimistic about a lot of those type of things. Like you look back at other technological advancements. Let's use cars as an example. People probably said the same thing about cars coming out. What is this going to do to people that are making buggies or stables or you know all those type of things but you look at what came from that that advancement like all of the parts that go into modern-day cars everything with roads you know you've talked you're talking overpasses construction you're talking you know electronics like technology and I just feel like most of the time that there's a big technological advancement like this sure there may be some initial displacement but it only enables us to go further. So I feel like I generally have an optimistic view. I do think that there will be changes, but I think that I feel pretty optimistic and especially optimistic for people that learn how to use it and get ahead of the curve. Yeah, and now speaking of being a little bit more reassuring, I want to pivot just for a second because this has been such a great conversation and I really appreciate your perspective and thank you so much for dropping by today. I do though, I have to give you an opportunity to talk a little bit about the cool things you're doing at Annie. And one of the things that you've emphasized is that Annie is intended to be your front desk's new best friend. It's not intended. to fully replace the front desk. And I'd love to hear a little bit more about the roadmap for Annie and kind of, you know, the sort of AI powered assistant that you're developing and what it can do and what practices have really to look forward to here. Yeah, no, the whole premise behind Annie, I think fits in a lot with everything that we just talked about. Like we don't want to, you know, overhype or promise something that we can't deliver on. And the idea really is just that, you know, staffing has been hard. You know, it's been hard for a while now and it's expensive, it's time consuming. And what we focus on with Annie are what are those areas in your practice that have repetitive tasks or time consuming tasks that you can... augment or, you know, guess offload in a way to an AI system. And we started with website chat and phone calls as the starting spot with that. so practices with us, you know, when their phone rings, their front desk still gets the chance to answer that phone call. And then that phone call gets missed or let's say it comes in at nine o'clock at night. That's where normally, you know, you could forward it to a cell phone. You could maybe have some other options there of what to do with that phone call. But this is where I feel like AI slots in really nice where Annie will pick up that phone call. So again, if it's missed and Annie can talk to the patient, answer their questions and schedule appointments so that when you come in in the morning, you now have an appointment on your appointment book rather than a voicemail or potentially not even a voicemail if they just called the practice next door. But we try to take that approach of, this is you know, enabling your staff where if they're checking out a patient, they don't have to choose between the phone call that's coming in and checking out the patient, but instead can know that every single. focus on that personalized one-on-one attention while Annie is handling the incoming calls. I think that's fantastic. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, cool. Well, and you know the other thing about Annie is, you you mentioned staffing is tough right now. You know compensation is a perpetual battle. Retention is a perpetual battle and you know y'all can change the price of the Annie software, but I would like to think that Annie is not going to be asking for a unilateral raise herself. Is that fair? Yep. Exactly. That's exactly it. So it's a completely, you know, new and different way to kind of address some of those staffing shortages while still, you know, putting a focus on the team and allowing them to do their job. Yeah, it's cool and so you know I wanted to give you an opportunity Connor again. Thank you so much for stopping by. What can folks do to find out more about Annie connect with you if they're interested in potentially pursuing that as an option for their practice? How can folks find? Yeah, well, we're happy. We were planning on offering a little discount for anybody that listens to this and comes over from you. So I'll get all of that information over to you. And we're always down to chat. Like I said, I'm a nerd. Our whole team, we recognize that a lot of this is new. And so if anybody's heard about AI helping out on the phones or with patients, we're happy to hop on a call, do a demo, and run through some of those things and answer any questions that anybody has. Well, thank you so much for the discount for our listeners. Really appreciate that. Of course. Thank you for sharing your insights. I've really enjoyed this conversation and I'd love to have you back on in the future. You know, as as AI continues to progress, I'm sure we'll have 20 times as many things to talk about even just six months from now and probably 100 times as many probably a year from now. It's going to grow exponentially and it's going to be quite the ride as you said so. Anyhow, if I can have my way, I'd love to have you back on at some point. Connor, thank you for dropping by. Everything will be in the show notes for those listening. If you want to find out more about Annie, we'll have a link to the URL. You can connect with Connor. We'll have some details on that special offer that he's putting together. Definitely check it out. I think it's a really cool opportunity and I'm really impressed with what you're doing. Connor, you and your team cutting edge work and I'm excited to see what's next for you so. Thank you so much for stopping by. Yeah, and all y'all listening to the episode today, thank you so much for dropping by. If you liked what you heard, please take a moment to follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and leave us a five-star review. It is the best way for us to reach new dentists to see if we can help more people. So thank you so much and thanks so much, Connor. We'll see you next time. All right, take care.