Trump announces the change from Artificial to Super Intelligence terminology

President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order renaming artificial intelligence to “super intelligence” amid growing concerns about AI safety and hours after top AI industry executives met the president at the White House and signed a “morally binding” accord agreeing to improve controls and internal audits. President Donald Trump rebranding of artificial intelligence to "Super Intelligence" comes amid growing concerns about AI safety. Getty Images ## Key Facts The executive order , released by the White House, notes that the “extraordinary technologies” from the country’s tech giants “far exceed what was envisioned when the term ‘Artificial Intelligence’ first came into use.” The order states that frontier AI models today can do much more than imitate or automate “discrete aspects of human intelligence.” Trump’s order directs federal departments and agencies to use “Super Intelligence” and “SI” in official communications and documents, although previously issued regulations, contracts, or documents will not need to be altered. The executive branch will no longer “acknowledge the usage of ‘Artificial Intelligence’ and ‘AI’ in any applicable setting.” The order sets a 60-day timeline for Trump’s science and technology advisor, Michael Kratsios, to consult with other agency heads and determine to what extent “Super Intelligence” should “supersede the existing statutory definition of ‘artificial intelligence’.” ## What else has the White House said about the renaming? A separate fact sheet issued by the White House on the executive order, stated: “The name Super Intelligence conveys the true capabilities of the technologies being developed today, unlocking new forms of human creativity and empowering Americans to achieve what was previously impossible—not simply imitating or automating human intelligence as is implied by the term ‘Artificial Intelligence.’” The fact sheet also took a swipe at Trump’s predecessor, noting that he president eliminated the “Biden Administration’s overreaching and harmful SI policies,” after returning to office. ## crucial quote Earlier on Tuesday, while speaking at the launch of the new America.gov website, Trump teased the executive order: “When you say artificial intelligence, it’s artificial. This is extreme intelligence, it’s superior intelligence, its supreme intelligence. But the word super is the best word of all and its the simplest, so we’re going to be naming it SI, Super Intelligence. We don’t don’t want to hear artificial intelligence cause its not artificial. It’s very powerful…it’s going to mostly be put to great use.” ## Key Background Trump first floated the idea of a name change by conducting a poll on Truth Social earlier this month. In a post, the president claimed many people think that “Artificial Intelligence” is “inaccurate, and very ineloquent.” He added, “A far more elegant and accurate description of this new phenomena would be Superior Intelligence (SI) or, Extreme Intelligence (EI) or, Supreme Intelligence (SI),” and urged people to vote on their preferred choice. The poll received about 66,000 votes, with Superior Intelligence coming out on top. A day later, Trump ran another poll, pitting “Superior Intelligence” against “Super Intelligence” and the latter came out on top with 65% of the vote. The president brought it up again when he addressed the United Nations General Assembly where he said the word “artificial” makes it sound like fake intelligence. He then added: “From this point forward, all of United States documents and hopefully the world’s will be changed to use the much more accurate term super as opposed to artificial. So it’s super intelligence. In other words, welcome to the new world of super intelligence.” ## tangent Earlier on Monday, Trump met with top billionaire AI industry executives at the White House, including OpenAI President Greg Brockman, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, SpaceX AI CEO Elon Musk, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and others. After the meeting, the president said the tech moguls had signed a “morally binding” accord on safety. The president later released the one-page document on Truth Social, calling on the companies to establish four layers of controls and audits. Huang, who was also at the launch of the new America.gov website, appeared to embrace the new name used by the president and said : “We used to call them data centers but the things that we’re building now, these are really SI factories, super intelligence factories.” Musk also reshared a clip of the gathering shared by a White House official and wrote: “Super Intelligence.” ## chief Critic Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the vice chair of the Senate’s Intelligence Committee who has pushed legislation on AI security, called out the president’s rebranding of AI. He wrote : “The companies building the most powerful AI systems are warning us that the technology is advancing faster than our safeguards. The president’s response? To rename it and tell the companies developing it to regulate themselves. But changing what we call artificial intelligence does nothing to address the very real risks that come with increasingly powerful AI systems.”