President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday directing the federal government to stop saying 'artificial intelligence' and start saying 'super intelligence.'
Under the order, official policy websites, policy documents and press releases will refer only to 'Super Intelligence,' with the abbreviation 'SI' covering the same technologies as the federal government's existing definition of AI. Agencies will not have to rewrite past regulations or documents, but officials are expected not to use the terms 'AI' or 'artificial intelligence' in relevant settings.
Trump signed the order after a White House luncheon with technology executives and government officials, and announced it alongside the launch of America.gov, the government's new AI chatbot. 'The word super is the best word of all, and it's the simplest,' Trump said. 'We don't want to hear artificial. Because it's not artificial. It's very powerful, it's very brilliant. It's going to mostly be put to good use and we'll stop the bad use.' He likened the word 'artificial' to 'fake news.'
Trump first floated the rebrand in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly, pitching it as a way to quell public fears about the pace of AI development. He said Chinese President Xi Jinping, who visited the White House the previous week, 'loves it' too.
The practical effect is largely rhetorical: the order does not change existing rules or the underlying technology. But it is an unusual step — a government renaming a scientific field by decree — and it lands as regulators, researchers and companies argue over how quickly frontier systems should be deployed. Critics, including Democratic Representative Ted Lieu, said the new label does nothing to address substantive AI oversight.
