Trump’s ‘Super Intelligence’ AI Rebrand Splits Government and Big Tech
Trump’s order renaming AI “Super Intelligence” spreads across agencies, while Big Tech, officials and media resist as a political loyalty test now looms.
Summary
At September’s end, President Trump ordered agencies to rename artificial intelligence “Super Intelligence,” or “SI.” The order says systems amplify rather than imitate human ingenuity and exempts earlier rules and documents. The change could become a loyalty test: the Associated Press lost access to some White House events after rejecting Trump’s earlier “Gulf of America” rebrand. Federal websites were quietly revised; NIH carries a transition banner and ICE seeks “SI-powered” detention surveillance. But the Pentagon’s Project Meridian used AI the next day, the FTC wrote lowercase, one-word “superintelligence,” HHS releases omit SI, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said AI on October 3. Existing names, including the Pentagon’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office, remain.
On October 27, Trump criticized The Wall Street Journal for retaining AI and suggested government documents may soon ban “artificial intelligence”; Newsmax also retains it. The nonbinding White House Accord on Super Intelligence, an AI-safety statement signed on order day by Google’s Sundar Pichai, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI’s Greg Brockman, xAI’s Elon Musk and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, has not settled usage. A third-quarter call review found only Zuckerberg and Musk consistent, although Meta already said “superintelligence”; Musk promised to rename SpaceXAI SpaceXSI but mixes AI and SI on X. Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet executives used AI, Microsoft’s shareholder letter invoked the “Super Intelligence era,” and Huang uses both. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff selected SIForce over AIForce. Federal workers are drafting transition guides, and agency leaders must propose a legislative definition by November’s end.
Two-thirds of Americans use AI several times weekly. Midterm voters rank it above environmental and climate policy, while Democrats also put it above abortion and gun policy, raising the risk that partisan terminology chills debate about jobs, warfare and chatbots’ mental-health effects.
Positives
- NIH’s transition banner acknowledges that both AI and SI will appear while federal terminology changes.
- Six technology chiefs signed the nonbinding White House Accord on Super Intelligence addressing AI safety.
- Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk consistently used the preferred terminology during third-quarter earnings calls.
- Federal agency leaders must propose a legislative definition of Super Intelligence by the end of November.
Risks & concerns
- Project Meridian, HHS, the FTC and Pete Hegseth all departed from the ordered terminology after its introduction.
- Trump suggested banning “artificial intelligence” from government documents after criticizing The Wall Street Journal on October 27.
- Federal employees are spending time revising websites, writing transition guides and developing a new legislative definition.
- Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet executives still used AI, while Jensen Huang and Elon Musk mixed both terms.
- A partisan loyalty test around terminology could suppress public discussion of jobs, warfare and chatbots’ mental-health effects.