How It Started: The UN Speech
Trump first raised the idea in an address to the UN General Assembly on September 22. He told the assembly the United States "totally rejects any attempt to construct a globalist scheme to control" AI, before announcing his intent to rename it "super intelligence" going forward. "The use of the word artificial makes intelligence sound fake," he said, adding that Super Intelligence "sounds much better" and "it's much more accurate."
He said he hoped the rest of the world would adopt the term too, declaring "welcome to the new world of super intelligence, SI." Trump also dismissed warnings from AI safety advocates, comparing them to climate change warnings, which he has separately called a hoax. His remarks came as leaders of more than 20, mostly European, countries were pushing for binding safety measures on advanced AI at the same UN gathering, an effort neither the US nor China endorsed.
The Crowdsourced Name
In the days between the UN speech and the executive order, Trump put the specific wording to a public vote, polling his social media followers on whether they preferred "SUPER INTELLIGENCE" or "SUPERIOR INTELLIGENCE." "Super Intelligence" won out and became the term used in both the executive order and the White House accord.
What the Executive Order Actually Does
On September 29, after hosting a lunch with top technology executives at the White House, Trump signed the order making the change official. "We're going to be signing a document today at about 5 o'clock, renaming artificial intelligence because it's not artificial," he told reporters beforehand. "We all agree on that, and we're going to be renaming it superintelligence, officially renaming it."
The order directs all executive branch departments and agencies to use "Super Intelligence" in place of "artificial intelligence" and "AI," and specifies that those terms will "no longer be acknowledged" in official communications going forward. It applies to federal government usage; it does not compel private companies, other branches of government, or the broader public to adopt the term.
The White House Accord
Separately, Trump signed the "White House Accord on Super Intelligence" with attending tech industry leaders. Notably, the document itself reportedly makes no formal declaration about the name change beyond using the new term in its own title. When a reporter asked outside the White House whether the accord was binding in any way, Trump responded that it is "morally binding," a phrase with no legal standing.
Reaction and Criticism
The response from lawmakers has been pointed. Senator Mark Warner, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, criticized the administration's approach, saying that renaming AI and telling companies to regulate themselves "does nothing to address the very real risks that come with increasingly powerful AI systems." Coverage of the story also notes it arrives as polling shows Trump's approval sinking on AI as a policy issue, and amid heightened public concern following warnings from a former Anthropic researcher that advanced AI could pose existential risks.
A Terminology Complication
The rebrand introduces a genuine technical wrinkle: "superintelligence" already has an established meaning in AI research, referring specifically to a hypothetical or emerging class of AI that exceeds human intelligence across most domains. That's a narrower and more specific concept than "artificial intelligence," which covers the entire field, from basic automation to large language models to advanced reasoning systems. Applying the term "Super Intelligence" to all AI government-wide risks blurring a distinction researchers have long relied on.
It remains unclear how, or whether, this terminology change will be enforced across the sprawling federal bureaucracy, what happens to AI-related legislation, agency names, and existing public-facing materials that use "artificial intelligence," or whether the rebrand carries any practical consequence beyond messaging. Reporting so far focuses on the announcement and signing; none of the outlets I reviewed describe implementation guidance or a compliance timeline.
