Trump’s Push to Rename AI as “Super Intelligence” Spreads Across Agencies

President Donald Trump’s campaign to rename artificial intelligence as “Super Intelligence” is spreading through the federal government. The Justice Department has told its employees, in a memo titled “Super Intelligence,” to use the new label, NBC News reported on October 6, two days after Trump announced the members of a task force he calls the “Super Intelligence Force.” On Thursday, Business Insider reported, Trump went further in a Truth Social post that called anyone who says artificial intelligence rather than super intelligence an enemy. Other major outlets had not reported the post, and the paper could not independently confirm its wording.

Business Insider said the post followed an executive order Trump signed in late September, after a September 29 White House lunch with technology executives including Elon Musk and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, that directs federal departments and agencies, to the extent the law allows, to use “Super Intelligence” and “SI” in place of “Artificial Intelligence” and “AI” in official correspondence, public communications and websites. Trump has argued that the word “artificial” makes the technology sound fake, according to the same report.

The order covers only the executive branch. It does not bind private companies, and the president has no authority to make citizens or businesses change their vocabulary, Business Insider noted. Business Insider observed that any attempt to punish companies or individuals for their word choice would raise obvious First Amendment problems.

Industry reaction has been uneven. Elon Musk said his company would rename its AI unit, SpaceXAI, to SpaceXSI, according to Business Insider, and the White House has pointed to executives including Musk and Huang who have used the new phrase, the Independent reported. But OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman told a Politico podcast, according to Business Insider, that the company has no plans to rename itself, and at a White House event, OpenAI president Greg Brockman described the company as building artificial intelligence. The Independent said several major companies it contacted did not respond when asked whether they would adopt the term.

There is also a definitional wrinkle. Among researchers, superintelligence already refers to a hypothetical system that surpasses human ability across many fields, a prospect that has driven calls for stronger safety rules rather than a label for today’s chatbots.

The push comes as public opinion of the industry has soured. A Quinnipiac University survey taken late last month found 73 percent of registered voters opposed building an AI data center in their community and only 25 percent approved of Trump’s handling of the technology, the Independent reported.

The White House’s case is that the new name better reflects how capable the technology has become and signals American ambition to lead it. Skeptics reply that renaming does nothing about the questions voters actually raise, such as electricity costs, safety and who is accountable when systems fail, and that branding critics as enemies, as the reported post did, is a strange way to win them over.