President Donald Trump signed an executive order in late September instructing all government agencies to stop using the term artificial intelligence and start calling it Super Intelligence. The administration selected that specific phrase after polling the public on X, rejecting alternatives like Extreme Intelligence and Supreme Intelligence.
This follows a pattern of renaming established institutions to signal American dominance. Previous examples include renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, creating a Department of War, and ongoing disputes over the name of the Kennedy Center.
The White House argues that current AI systems amplify human ingenuity rather than imitate it, so the terminology should reflect that distinction. However, the practical effect of this rebranding is likely to extend far beyond federal paperwork.
Adopting the new term will function as a political loyalty test. Those who use Super Intelligence demonstrate allegiance to the administration, while those who continue using AI risk becoming targets for criticism. The Trump administration previously barred the Associated Press from some White House press events after the news outlet refused to adopt the name Gulf of America.
Most Americans do not consider the name of the Great Lakes when discussing geography, yet artificial intelligence occupies the center of the national conversation. Two-thirds of the US population reports interacting with AI multiple times a week, making this the boldest rebranding attempt yet.
Government adoption so far
One month into the order, the term Super Intelligence or the abbreviation SI appears frequently in government solicitations. Immigration and Customs Enforcement issued a request for information asking companies to build SI-powered surveillance for detention facilities.
The change has occurred silently on most government websites. The National Institutes of Health now displays a banner warning visitors that they might see both the old and new terms during the transition.
There have been hiccups in the rollout. The Pentagon announced Project Meridian a day after the rebrand order, using the old terminology to study the future of warfare. A Federal Trade Commission press release last week used superintelligence in lowercase rather than the two-word, capitalised version ordered by the president. Recent releases from Health and Human Services show no sign of the new language.
The term AI will likely persist because of the countless offices, initiatives, and programs that have launched in recent years. The executive order explicitly states it does not apply to previously issued regulations or documents.
Government employees are still adjusting to the phrase. A researcher at a national lab used AI repeatedly during an interview before sheepishly acknowledging the slip-up. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also used AI in an interview on October 3.
Trump’s other rebranding efforts suggest the goal is to change how the public speaks, not just how the government writes.
Media and tech industry response
In the weeks since the order, most of Trump’s posts on Truth Social have endorsed midterm candidates. On October 27, he paused electioneering to criticise the Wall Street Journal for not using Super Intelligence. He described it as the name virtually everyone else is using or soon will be, and suggested a new rule would soon ban artificial intelligence from government documents outright.
The Wall Street Journal is not alone in this resistance. Newsmax, an outlet whose founder describes itself as supportive of the President and his policies, is not using the preferred term either.
Big Tech executives are responding in complicated ways. The same day Trump signed the rebranding order, he released the White House Accord on Super Intelligence, a nonbinding statement on AI safety. Six of the most powerful figures in technology signed it: Sundar Pichai of Google, Dario Amodei of Anthropic, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, Greg Brockman of OpenAI, Elon Musk of xAI, and Jensen Huang of Nvidia.
Even among this group, the term has not caught on. Three members attended Trump’s inauguration.
CNBC reported that only Zuckerberg and Musk used the term consistently in third-quarter earnings calls. Zuckerberg does not quite count because Meta has been using superintelligence since last year. Musk’s companies seem to use the term the most, and he pledged to rename SpaceXAI to SpaceXSI. Musk himself still mixes SI and AI when posting on X.
Executives from Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet used AI in their calls, though Microsoft’s recent letter to shareholders referred to the Super Intelligence era. Huang has referenced the term but still uses AI too.
Costs and consequences
One objection to the rebranding is the cost in time and taxpayer dollars. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has the prerogative to decide that SIForce is a better name than AIForce and direct his company to implement the change. Government employees, however, are now spending time writing guides on how departments should navigate the rebrand.
Per the executive order, leaders of federal agencies must draft a new legislative definition of Super Intelligence for the president to review by the end of this month.
The concern extends beyond wasted resources. The author frequently overhears strangers discussing AI at grocery stores or coffee shops. The substance of these conversations is rarely uplifting, often focusing on job losses or AI-powered warfare. What is heartening is the widespread desire among people to have a say in how this technology transforms their lives.
People hold wildly different feelings about AI, including outright hostility, but these differences do not yet map neatly onto the partisan divisions that make it awkward to discuss immigration or climate change.
If Super Intelligence turns into a loyalty test, that dynamic will cease to exist. It is easy to imagine two people chatting about whether chatbots are good for mental health stopping once they realise one is saying super intelligence and the other is saying AI.
Midterm elections are approaching. Americans say AI is more important to them in this election than environmental and climate policy, with Democrats ranking it above abortion and gun policy. The nation is only just beginning to have a conversation about what AI will mean for daily life. Whether Super Intelligence catches on, turning the terminology itself into a loyalty test will do nothing to advance that conversation.
