AI exposure: Dental Assistants
Perform limited clinical duties under the direction of a dentist. Clinical duties may include equipment preparation and sterilization, preparing patients for treatment, assisting the dentist during treatment, and providing patients with instructions for oral healthcare procedures. May perform administrative duties such as scheduling appointments, maintaining medical records, billing, and coding information for insurance purposes.
Reading this score
computedAt 13.9% of weighted task load, Dental Assistants sits at the 22th percentile, below the point where a job's centre of gravity has moved. 73.7% of what this role does is untouched, meaning current systems cannot produce that work at all, whatever the commercial incentive.
What holds the line here is embodiment. Across this occupation's 16 tasks it averages 2.25 out of 3, the highest of the five friction dimensions. In plain terms, the work has to happen in physical space. A language model cannot move matter. Until the robotics to do this work is both good enough and cheap enough to deploy widely, capability in software does not reach it.
The most exposed thing this job does is Record treatment information in patient records, at 60.0%. The least is Fabricate and fit orthodontic appliances and materials for patients, at 0.0%. A gap of 60.0% between two parts of the same job is the reason this index publishes at task level. An occupation-wide number would have hidden both.
Within healthcare support occupations, this one is more exposed than most. The median across the 19 roles in the group is 11.4%, and only 5 of them score higher than this. Occupational families are not uniform, and the spread inside them is often wider than the gap between them.
What would move this score. Of 16 tasks, 2 are currently banded exposed, 2 assisted and 12 untouched. For that distribution to shift materially would take robotics cheap and reliable enough to deploy at scale, not a better language model. The score is re-computed every quarter against a fresh capability reference, and the change is published rather than quietly applied.
Where the score comes from
judgedEvery task is scored through the standardised work activities it maps to. These are this occupation’s averages on the six rubric dimensions. Capability is what AI can do; the other five are what stands in the way.
| Dimension | Mean | Scale |
|---|---|---|
| Capability | 0.95 | 0-4 |
| Embodiment | 2.25 | 0-3 |
| Presence | 1.64 | 0-3 |
| Accountability | 2.15 | 0-3 |
| Context | 1.65 | 0-3 |
| Verification cost | 2.25 | 0-3 |
Task by task
16 tasks, O*NET 31.0| Task | Exposed | Assisted | Untouched | Importance | Band |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record treatment information in patient records. | 60.0% | 40.0% | 0.0% | 4.77 | exposed |
| Schedule appointments, prepare bills and receive payment for dental services, complete insurance forms, and maintain records, manually or using computer. | 59.1% | 32.6% | 8.3% | 4.18 | exposed |
| Provide postoperative instructions prescribed by dentist. | 35.0% | 40.0% | 25.0% | 4.58 | assisted |
| Take and record medical and dental histories and vital signs of patients. | 29.2% | 33.3% | 37.5% | 4.30 | assisted |
| Order and monitor dental supplies and equipment inventory. | 13.3% | 11.7% | 75.0% | 4.60 | untouched |
| Instruct patients in oral hygiene and plaque control programs. | 5.0% | 20.0% | 75.0% | 4.35 | untouched |
| Prepare patient, sterilize or disinfect instruments, set up instrument trays, prepare materials, or assist dentist during dental procedures. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.81 | untouched |
| Assist dentist in management of medical or dental emergencies. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.66 | untouched |
| Expose dental diagnostic x-rays. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.59 | untouched |
| Apply protective coating of fluoride to teeth. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.23 | untouched |
| Make preliminary impressions for study casts and occlusal registrations for mounting study casts. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.17 | untouched |
| Pour, trim, and polish study casts. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.11 | untouched |
| Fabricate temporary restorations or custom impressions from preliminary impressions. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.95 | untouched |
| Clean and polish removable appliances. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.77 | untouched |
| Clean teeth, using dental instruments. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.03 | untouched |
| Fabricate and fit orthodontic appliances and materials for patients, such as retainers, wires, or bands. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.80 | untouched |
Task text and importance ratings sourced from O*NET 31.0. Shares computed. The occupation score is the importance-weighted mean.
Occupations either side of this one
The four closest scores in the same occupational family, then the four closest anywhere in the index.
Read this carefully. Exposure is not displacement. A high score means current AI systems can produce this work, not that anyone will stop paying a person to do it. Adoption depends on economics, regulation and inertia that this index deliberately does not model. How the score is built.
What this means in practice
Most of this work is not reachable by current systems, so the immediate pressure is on the administrative edges of the role rather than its core: the scheduling, the reporting, the written records. That is where time is recovered.