At a MAHA summit featuring AI and Silicon Valley executives, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. declared that artificial intelligence would free Americans from "medical tyranny" by letting them "fact check their own medical advice." The embrace of AI drew immediate criticism from both medical experts and prominent voices within the MAHA movement, who said it contradicted the movement's anti-corporate roots.
Bioethicist Zeke Emanuel of the University of Pennsylvania said Kennedy "obviously doesn't understand how AI works," noting that AI systems aggregate existing medical literature and case studies, meaning users are "actually getting medical expertise." An HHS spokesperson countered that Kennedy wants to give Americans more control of their health data by using AI to help them "understand it, interrogate it, compare it with the evidence, and make better decisions with their doctors," while also helping doctors work faster.
Some MAHA allies were more concerned about the summit's funding. OpenAI and Anthropic were among the sponsors, along with more than a dozen companies with pending business before the U.S. government. Vaccine researcher Robert Malone called it "classic pay-to-play," saying grassroots activists who originally powered MAHA were sidelined. Organizer Tony Lyons defended the corporate sponsorships, saying the goal was to "build the biggest movement we can possibly build."
Kennedy's stance aligns with the Trump administration's broader pro-AI, deregulatory agenda, which has included letting the AI industry police itself. But it conflicts with some MAHA-aligned groups, such as Moms Across America, that campaign against data center pollution and electricity costs. Harvard bioethics expert Glenn Cohen said he was surprised Kennedy didn't see "the risk that market incentives may diverge from the public good," given his skepticism of "big food."