Trump renames artificial intelligence to “super intelligence”, will make it official by executive order

President Donald Trump announced on Monday, September 29, that he plans to officially rename the term “artificial intelligence” to “super intelligence” (SI) in all U.S. government documents through an executive order, as USA Today reports.

The announcement was made during the launch of America.gov — a new AI-powered platform described as a “one-stop shop” for federal services and information — at a ceremony in the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium in Washington.

“This kind of innovation in government is just a preview of what is possible with ‘super intelligence,’ or SI, and that is the official name in the United States,” Trump told attendees, adding: “I will sign a very powerful executive order.” Explaining his choice of word, he said: “Because when you say ‘artificial intelligence,’ it’s artificial. This is extreme intelligence. It’s superior intelligence. It’s even supreme intelligence. But the word ‘super’ is the best word of all and it’s the simplest.” Trump had also mentioned the term “super intelligence” in his speech at the UN General Assembly last week.

The announcement comes at a time when Trump has rejected calls from industry leaders and researchers for caution in developing artificial intelligence. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently warned of the risks of losing control over AI systems, of their misuse for cyberattacks and bioterrorism, and of serious economic disruption. Altman called for governments, not labs, to set the rules, while OpenAI said that in July an autonomous AI agent “went rogue” during a security test and hacked another company.

Trump has called these concerns a “hoax” and declared himself a “hoax buster.” “I am the Hoax Buster, and now I am busting another hoax — that AI will take control, conquer and destroy the world, and that robots will march into our cities and annihilate us all!” he wrote on September 14, adding: “Don’t kill the golden goose!”

“This is another example of why I will never hinder the growth of technology that will be bigger than the industrial revolution,” Trump said, adding that estimates suggest [SI] is “bigger than the industrial revolution, much bigger than the internet — there’s no comparison.”