Chris Ciriello

Founder & CEO, Perceptive Health

[Chris Ciriello @chris_ciriello]

@thecurioustales cool!

[Chris Ciriello @chris_ciriello]

Andrej Karpathy — OpenAI cofounder, former Tesla AI director — scored every job in the US economy on AI exposure this weekend. It went so viral that Elon Musk replied saying all jobs will be optional.

Karpathy deleted the repo within 24 hours, calling it a "saturday morning 2 hour vibe coded project" that was "wildly misinterpreted."

I looked up dentistry.

Dentists: 149,000 jobs. $179K median pay. 4% growth. Green on the map. Dental hygienists scored a 2 out of 10 on AI exposure. Dental assistants similarly low.

The scoring logic is simple — if the work product is entirely digital, exposure is high. If it requires physical presence and real-time clinical judgment, exposure is low. Software developers scored 8-9. Roofers scored 0-1.

But Karpathy's framework reveals something else about dentistry. The same thing that makes it safe from AI — it's physical, it's hands-in-mouth, it's one-patient-at-a-time — is also what makes it hard to scale. A software engineer with AI tools can do 3x the work. A dentist with AI tools still sees one patient at a time. Hygienist vacancies have been a crisis since 2021. Practices can't find assistants. Rural communities can't recruit dentists.

AI exposure: low. Workforce shortage: high. The profession AI can't replace is the same one that in its current form it can't easily help.

[Chris Ciriello @chris_ciriello]

Dental care is the out-of-pocket outlier—not because it matters less, but because dental insurance never evolved into true risk-pooling.

Insurance expands when future risk can be priced with confidence. Medicine crossed that threshold once disease progression became trackable over time—A1C, blood pressure, cholesterol. Those signals made risk auditable.

Dentistry never developed an equivalent. Without reliable ways to track early disease at the same site over time, insurers couldn't underwrite long-horizon risk. The rational response was to cap exposure.

Annual maximums and narrow coverage aren't accidents—they're risk-limiting design choices. Those caps shift cost to patients, even when they're "insured."

The question isn't whether oral health matters. It's what would need to change for dental insurance to function like insurance.

#dentistry #valuebasedcare

[Chris Ciriello @chris_ciriello]

@Perceptive_io @SchulichMedDent Thanks all!

[Chris Ciriello @chris_ciriello]

https://t.co/jihsYwrq4D

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Believe in the future

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

I strongly believe that all managers in a technical area must be technically excellent.

Managers in software must write great software or it’s like being a cavalry captain who can’t ride a horse!

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Also, work ethic expectations would be extreme, but much less than I demand of myself

[Marty Jablow DMD @jablow]

X-Guide Dynamic Navigation Receives FDA 510(k) Clearance To Aid in Minimally Invasive Endodontic Procedures https://t.co/ojWtK1Lbcy

[Chris Ciriello @chris_ciriello]

VideaHealth Dental AI Solution Receives FDA 510(k) Clearance, Establishing Industry-wide Benchmark for Clinical Accuracy https://t.co/lGOD6Sjm8J

[Chris Ciriello @chris_ciriello]

https://t.co/a9qyCV8BAs

[ASTDD @astddorg]

More than 2 yrs into the pandemic, a @CareQuestInst survey of nearly 5,700 Americans shows many aren’t receiving dental care. Reasons for this vary.

[Eric G. Jackson, DDS, MAGD @EJacksonDDS]

Only 4 months away! Join us in Nashville for the Academy for Sports Dentistry annual symposium! Details: https://t.co/thLmdo6GUs

#SportsDentistry #SportsMedicine #AthleticTrainer #AT #Mouthguards #Injury #TeamDentist

[Chris Ciriello @chris_ciriello]

@CDAdentists @ACPros @TheAACD @jflucke

Seeking qualified dentists to beta test robotic assisted technology for dental crown procedures. Founder a #IADFE Fellow. Silicon Valley start-up VC funded. Please message me direct for more information.