Background: The implementation of artificial intelligence brings with it a great change in health care, however, there is a discrepancy about the perceptions and attitudes that dental students present towards these new technologies.
Methods: The study design was observational, descriptive, and cross-sectional. A total of 200 dental students who met the inclusion criteria were surveyed online. For the qualitative variables, descriptive statistical measures were obtained, such as absolute and relative frequencies. For the comparison of the main variables with the type of educational institution, sex and level of education, the chi-square test or Fisher's exact test was used according to the established assumptions with a level of statistical significance of p < 0.05 and a confidence level of 95%.
Results: The results indicated that 86% of the students surveyed agreed that artificial intelligence will lead to great advances in dentistry. However, 45% of the participants disagreed that artificial intelligence would replace dentists in the future. In addition, the respondents agreed that the use of artificial intelligence should be part of undergraduate and postgraduate studies with 67% and 72% agreement rates respectively.
Conclusion: The attitudes and perceptions of the students indicate that 86% agreed that artificial intelligence will lead to great advances in dentistry. This suggests a bright future for the relationship between dentists and artificial intelligence.
Keywords: artificial intelligence; attitudes; deep learning; dentistry; machine learning; perceptions.