Why the Government Now Calls AI 'Super Intelligence'
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on September 29, 2026, requiring U.S. executive-branch policy websites, policy documents and press releases to say 'Super Intelligence' instead of 'artificial intelligence'. The Verge The order is titled "Inaugurating the Era of Super Intelligence." The White House The White House lists 'Inaugurating The Era Of Super Intelligence' as an Executive Order dated September 29, 2026.
The order tells executive departments and agencies to use "Super Intelligence" and "SI" in official letters and public messages, "to the maximum extent permitted by law." The White House It does not ask them to change old rules or documents. Officials are expected not to acknowledge the terms 'artificial intelligence' or 'AI' in relevant settings.
Trump first talked about the new name in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly. He signed the order after a White House lunch with tech CEOs and government officials to discuss Super Intelligence. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk stood with Trump for public remarks after the meeting.
Trump had said he would sign an order renaming artificial intelligence to 'super intelligence'. CNN Top AI leaders signed a promise to 'self-police' AI work after meeting with Trump. Trump rejected new AI laws after they agreed to that plan. SMH Separately, the administration started an America.gov AI website to make government services easier to use.
In practical terms, government wording ends up in work papers that companies must follow. That includes procurement requirements, which cover what the government buys, plus compliance filings, grant solicitations, standards references and contractor documentation. It is like putting a new label on the same jar. The swap does not change model architectures (how systems are built), training pipelines (how they learn), evaluation harnesses (how they are tested) or deployment controls (how they are released). Teams that follow federal guidance will need translation layers, or lists that match old and new terms. Search matters. Version control matters. Audit trails matter.
In my view, the problems will be day to day, not big ideas. Engineers already match inside names to outside legal terms, and this adds one more match. Not acknowledging 'artificial intelligence' or 'AI' can confuse office staff and companies that must copy federal text exactly while keeping their own guides, contracts and safety reports clear. That work is dull and takes time.
The broader context here is the promise to 'self-police' and the choice not to seek new AI laws. Voluntary promises can move faster than new rules and can use direct knowledge from labs doing large-scale training and inference, the heavy computing used to build models and run them for people. They do not have the enforcement, reporting rules and court review that come with a law. Watching my two children grow up with home PCs, the web and phones showed me that people use what is in front of them, whatever agencies call it.
Looking ahead, there is reason for hope around use. If the America.gov AI effort makes services easier to reach, that helps ordinary people. One shared federal name could also focus attention and money. The worry is confusion if one name is used for everything from rules-based automation, simple software that follows fixed rules, to frontier foundation models, very large systems built for many tasks. Clear words help builders. For now, builders should use SI for federal papers, keep AI for daily technical work, and write down that they mean the same thing.
