Trump Wants to Rename AI. Why Does the Name Matter?
President Donald Trump told the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday morning that the United States will rename artificial intelligence to "super intelligence." The Verge
Trump said all U.S. documents, and hopefully documents around the world, should use "super" instead of "artificial." He said "artificial" makes intelligence sound fake and called "super intelligence" more accurate and better sounding.
The comments come with other recent statements about AI rules. Trump has said the United States already has guardrails in place to regulate and prosecute AI companies. Reuters He has also said he plans to appoint a new adviser on artificial intelligence known as an "AI czar." Reuters
Looking at what this means for people who build, buy and control these systems, words work like labels on shared folders. Purchase orders, safety checklists, legal filings and export rules all use the same terms. Change a basic word and every paper that uses it must be rechecked. That takes work and can cause confusion.
In my view the swap causes problems because the two phrases mean different things. Artificial intelligence is a broad name for how these systems are built. Super intelligence usually means how powerful they are. Mixing those ideas makes safety tests and access rules harder to write.
Worth flagging for anyone who keeps official papers is the update problem. Federal forms, contracts and technical guides point to each other. They do not all change at once. Until they match, companies, auditors and lawyers would have to use two sets of words at the same time. That can be handled, but it costs time and money.
The broader context here is everyday use. AI is now normal office software. It answers help-desk questions, helps write computer code, handles call centers, and helps with design and data work. My kids treated autocomplete and voice assistants as normal background tools years ago. Office workers now treat larger models the same way.
In my view, over the longer arc, clearer public language would still help. Artificial never meant fake to engineers. It meant built, not biological. Super suggests a level of power that most systems today do not claim to have. The more useful path is to keep clear terms for narrow systems, general-purpose frontier models, and any more powerful successors. That helps buyers, engineers and regulators do their jobs.
