AI over doctors? Medical societies push back.

With the nation’s health secretary touting AI’s capabilities over doctors, medical societies are pushing back.

Six physician organizations issued a statement this week saying that it’s incorrect to suggest that Ai is outperforming doctors and may be better suited to make clinical decisions. They say that AI is a useful tool with great potential to improve care, but isn’t a substitute for the experience and judgment of physicians.

“Statements suggesting AI is inherently better informed than physicians, or that physicians cannot be trusted to make clinical decisions without first consulting this technology, diminish physician expertise and risk undermining patients’ trust,” the groups said.

These six groups released the statement: the American Medical Association; the American Academy of Family Physicians; the American Academy of Pediatrics; the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists; the American College of Physicians; and the American College of Surgeons.

The medical societies also pushed back against arguments suggesting that it’s a choice between AI and physicians.

“Physicians have long embraced technologies that improve care, and AI has tremendous potential to provide new tools and insights. But patient safety, physician expertise and the humanity of clinical practice must guide how these tools are developed and used.

“Pitting physicians against technology or suggesting AI should replace physician expertise does not advance this important work. We need to move carefully, and we need to get this right,” the groups said.

A bigger role for AI

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. espoused the virtues of AI at a Make America Healthy Again Summit this week. As Politico reported, AI would help free Americans from “medical tyranny.” Politico noted that OpenAI and Anthropic sponsored the summit.

Kennedy also said that AI can provide “a second opinion that is much better informed than any doctor in the country,” The New York Times reported.

But Kennedy isn’t the only one suggesting that there will soon be a time when AI is outperforming doctors.

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, professor and vice provost for global initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania, co-authored a JAMA paper that suggests AI will not only outperform physicians, but AI alone will also do better than doctors aided by AI. They opined that autonomous AI “will likely be ready to be deployed for real-world cognitive medical tasks in some, maybe many, workflows by 2030.”

In an interview with Chief Healthcare Executive®, Emanuel says there needs to be more research of how AI is performing on clinical care in the real world. But he says the paper, which gained wide attention, was intended to spur more thinking and planning for AI in healthcare, including questions of payment, regulation and liability.

“You only get to these other questions once you recognize and accept that we're going to have autonomous clinical AI,” Emanuel says.

Practicing medicine over performing tasks

Dr. John Whyte, CEO of the American Medical Association, debated the question of AI with Emanuel on the Lifers podcast with Christina Farr. Afterward, Whyte wrote on LinkedIn that doctors have the insight and instinct to treat patients with conditions that don’t fit the textbook, and to understand what matters most to patients.

“Clinical performance is only part of the equation,” Whyte wrote. “Performing medical tasks well is not the same as practicing medicine well.”

The American Medical Association and Digital Medicine Society released a framework last month outlining the physician’s responsibilities in using AI. Medical societies and most healthcare leaders say that AI can offer doctors more insights into making good decisions, but doctors must make the call on treatment.

It’s not as if doctors aren’t using AI.

Roughly four out of five doctors (81%) say they’re using AI in their work, according to a March 2026 AMA survey. Physicians are using AI to document conversations with patients, find the latest research, and help prepare patients to be discharged.

Dr. Jonathan Perlin, president and CEO of The Joint Commission, told Chief Healthcare Executive in an interview last week that he sees the potential for AI to help avoid medical errors.

“We see AI as one of the mechanisms to provide failsafes for some of the things that we still haven't made as much progress on, in terms of really assuring good handoffs, avoiding avoidable errors or harm,” Perlin says.

“And we think there's an important opportunity, because on the one hand, we want to make sure there are guardrails so that there are appropriate uses of AI,” he adds. “On the other, we want to make sure that there's not overly constraining regulation.”

In an opinion piece published last month, Matt Kull, the chief information and digital strategy officer of the Inova health system, says hospitals and health systems need to face what may be an uncomfortable reality: Patients are increasingly turning to AI for medical questions and to do homework on their doctors.

“The strategic question isn't whether to let AI into the patient journey, it's whether health systems will earn a seat in that conversation or risk being bypassed while we debate who governs what and when,” Kull wrote. “I am concerned most of us risk being on the wrong end of that equation.”

• Read more: AI is changing medicine. Medical education must change, too.