RFK Jr. Says AI Beats Your Doctor — The AI Disagrees

At a Make America Healthy Again event this week, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made a surprising pitch: trust AI, not your doctor. In a chat with Vice President JD Vance, Kennedy said AI is "better informed than any doctor in the country" and that it would free Americans from the "medical tyranny" of health experts. He told people to use chatbots for second opinions on medical advice.

Kennedy went further, predicting AI would confirm his own contrarian views. If someone says masks work, he claimed, "AI may tell you otherwise." Same for social distancing and vaccines. But when reporters actually asked the tools, the opposite happened. Google's Gemini and OpenAI's ChatGPT both said yes, masks reduce spread of disease. Both said yes, social distancing works. Both said vaccines can prevent infection and transmission — with the same careful caveats real doctors use.

So the AI Kennedy promised would back him up instead echoed mainstream medicine. That matters because Kennedy has no medical or scientific training, and his claims have been linked to real-world harm — like measles outbreaks in undervaccinated communities. Experts warn that trusting a chatbot over a clinician can be dangerous, especially for serious conditions where AI can be confidently wrong.

There's also a money angle. The event was sponsored in part by AI companies OpenAI and Anthropic, plus Walmart and a cancer-screening company. That's notable for a movement that usually rails against corporate influence. Kennedy did admit AI has "some downsides," but still quoted OpenAI's CEO saying doctors who skip AI check-ins are committing "malpractice." The takeaway: even the AI he's promoting doesn't agree with him.