A Cure For ‘medical Tyranny’: Rfk Jr. Puts A Positive Spin On Ai

Artificial intelligence more than vaccine safety was a focal point of a Make America Healthy Again Summit put on by supporters of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Tuesday.

Even as many Americans are worrying about the tech destroying humanity, the message from Kennedy was overwhelmingly positive.

Kennedy touted the virtues of “super intelligence” in a fireside conversation with Vice President JD Vance, occasionally using the term favored by their boss, President Donald Trump, and said AI would solve health problems that would be "otherwise existential.”

“One of the things that's going to change is that we’re never, ever again going to be able to be dominated by public officials who tell us ‘trust the experts,’” Kennedy said, referencing his own critique of public health officials’ handling of the Covid pandemic. Artificial intelligence, Kennedy said, would free Americans from “medical tyranny.”

The White House expects MAHA voters will help Republicans win in November, but the pro-AI message comes at a time when Americans have become increasingly concerned about the health harms of the energy- and water-sucking data centers needed to run the technology. Leading AI executives recently terrified many Americans with their warnings that they feared there was a chance the AI agents they’ve created could destroy humanity.

A new POLITICO Poll found a majority of Americans share those worries.

Vance said AI companies should be held accountable if their tools harm people. But he added that people are too worried about the downsides of the technology, which makes them ignore the potential benefits.

“I do think that we have been so dominated by the doomers and the cynics, and that it's going to be Terminator 2, and the robots are going to come and kill all of us,” the vice president told Kennedy. One of the benefits is that the experts don’t have monopoly over knowledge, Vance said, echoing Kennedy.

The summit was sponsored by OpenAI and Anthropic, where executives have expressed concerns. Kennedy said Sam Altman — the CEO of OpenAI — had recently visited the Health and Human Services Department.

Kennedy’s conversation with Vance was just one of several moments during the summit in which AI’s promise in health care was discussed, including by representatives of OpenAI and Anthropic. And Tuesday’s sessions followed a separate MAHA event on Monday that touted the tech as the key to capitalizing on data to improve Americans’ health.

The praise comes as many politicians — including Republican lawmakers and governors — have joined voters in raising concerns about the technology. Josh Hawley, a Republican senator from Missouri, questioned Kennedy at a congressional hearing this spring about the health risks caused by data centers. “The risks to me are horrendous,” Kennedy told Hawley, adding that he’s tasked some of his health department agencies with reviewing existing studies and also doing new studies on the issue “so we can better inform the American public.”

In August, leaders from MAHA-aligned groups, including Moms Across America and Children’s Health Defense warned Trump, Kennedy and other administration officials about the health harms of data center expansion, writing in a letter that “American AI leadership should not come at the cost of a more toxic burden for American children.”

The Tuesday summit was put on by the MAHA Center, a group made of Kennedy allies.

It followed a half-day event Monday about leveraging artificial intelligence to utilize health data and lower health care costs hosted by MAHA Institute, a sister nonprofit. Kennedy also spoke at that event, along with Mark Gorton, MAHA Institute’s president, and Amy Gleason and Dan Brillman, deputy administrators at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Gorton said the MAHA movement can leverage its corporate connections to help modernize the government’s data infrastructure.

“The AI economy is built on a foundation of data. Without data, the potential for AI in health and medicine cannot be realized. Solving the health data problem is important for a number of multi-trillion-dollar companies, and the MAHA Institute can channel corporate reform energy towards targeted policy plans.”

Some attendees chafed at sharing their health data and expressed concerns about the movement’s ties to industry. “When it comes to sharing our personal information…I think we have to be very cautious,” one attendee, granted anonymity to speak candidly, told POLITICO.