Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Vice President JD Vance presented artificial intelligence as a tool to curtail government authority at the Make America Healthy Again Summit on Tuesday in Washington, drawing sharp contrast with public unease about the technology.
Kennedy, speaking in a fireside conversation with Vance, promoted what he called "super intelligence" as a solution to entrenched health bureaucracy. He echoed President Donald Trump's language and asserted AI would free Americans from what he termed "medical tyranny."
"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 criticism of federal health officials' pandemic response.
Vance dismissed concerns about AI risks as overblown. "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," Vance said. He argued that AI ensures "the experts don't have monopoly over knowledge."
Yet a POLITICO Poll found a majority of Americans worry about the technology. Leading AI executives, including those at OpenAI and Anthropic—both sponsors of the summit—have privately expressed fears that the systems they built could pose existential risks.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, visited the Health and Human Services Department recently, Kennedy confirmed. Representatives from both companies participated in the summit to discuss AI applications in healthcare.
The White House views the Make America Healthy Again movement as a voting bloc critical to Republican success in November.
The embrace of AI by Kennedy and Vance contrasts with growing alarm from other Republicans. Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri questioned Kennedy at a congressional hearing this spring about health risks from the energy- and water-intensive data centers that power AI systems. Kennedy responded that the risks are "horrendous" and said he has directed HHS agencies to review existing studies and conduct new research on the issue.
