The White House issued an executive order on Tuesday that requires every federal agency to refer to artificial intelligence as “Super Intelligence” in official web pages, policy papers and press releases. The directive, signed by President Donald Trump, replaces the standard terminology with a single label across the entire executive branch.
Trump announced the change during the launch of America.gov, telling reporters that “super is the best word” and that it is also “the simplest”. He added that Chinese President Xi Jinping, who recently visited the White House, “loves it” as well, according to reporting by The Verge.
In the same remarks, Trump rejected the phrase “artificial intelligence,” arguing that the technology is not artificial but “very powerful, it’s very brilliant”. He claimed the new label would focus attention on beneficial uses and help stop harmful applications, likening the word “artificial” to “fake news”. The Verge recorded these statements.
The rebranding effort was first hinted at in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly the previous week, where Trump said the new terminology would ease public anxiety about rapid AI progress and potential safety hazards. The Verge notes that the UN address set the stage for the executive order.
Federal agencies are not required to rewrite existing regulations or historical documents, but they must avoid using the terms “artificial intelligence” or “AI” in any future official context. Compliance will be monitored through internal review processes, and officials are expected to adopt the “Super Intelligence” label consistently across all communications, according to the order’s language.
The term “Superintelligence” already appears in industry discussions to describe highly capable AI systems, but the administration’s directive seeks to embed it as the statutory definition of the technology. Observers described the move as an unusual linguistic shift that could affect how future regulations are drafted and how the public perceives advanced machine learning, The Verge reported.