Understanding the misalignment of dental artificial intelligence: An empirical study on clinicians' perceived needs versus technologically-driven development.

The expansion of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare is often framed as a response to clinical needs and system inefficiencies; however, its alignment with professional values and everyday practice remains less examined. This study examines the role of AI in dentistry through qualitative semi-structured interviews with 16 dentists in active clinical practice, conducted in Chile in 2025, focusing on how practitioners evaluate AI in relation to their professional ethos. The findings show that dentistry is understood as a moral practice centered on relational care and situated judgment. While technology has historically supported this ethos, the processes of marketization, bureaucratization, and acceleration increasingly undermine its conditions. AI is not simply experienced as being beneficial or harmful. Applications that reduce administrative burden or support diagnostic tasks are often welcomed by practitioners, and in isolation, this assessment is reasonable. However, when examined at the level of the sociotechnical system in which they are embedded, even tools that appear to return time to the clinical encounter operate within institutional arrangements that simultaneously compress time and intensify productivity demands. The study further argues that AI development does not consistently follow articulated clinical needs but is shaped by data availability and technical feasibility. By foregrounding professional ethos as an evaluative lens, this article offers a practice-centered approach to assess when AI may support, distort, or fail to address the aims of healthcare.