The U.S. Census Bureau has stopped using the term “Artificial Intelligence” in its business surveys, replacing it with “Super Intelligence” following Executive Order 14434.
What the latest data shows
A chart produced by Apollo Global Management in September 2025 suggested corporate AI adoption was slowing down. That analysis relied on numbers collected by the Census Bureau. I ran the figures again to see how things had changed over the last year. The Bureau had already stopped using the old terminology.
Every two weeks the Census runs the Business Trends and Outlook Survey. It sends the questionnaire to 200,000 businesses out of a total 1.2 million. Each company in the panel answers only once every twelve weeks. The latest results were published on October 22, 2026.
I used those numbers to build a new version of the adoption chart. It tracks the last twelve months and shows a major shift in how the survey was asked.
In September 2025, the largest companies (250+ employees) said they used AI in producing goods or services about 12% of the time. Under the new wording, which asks if AI is used in any business function, those same large firms answered yes around 30% of the time in February 2026. By October 2026 that figure had reached 40.7%.
The breakdown for other company sizes under the new question is as follows:
- 100–249 employees: 33.5%
- 50–99 employees: 27.9%
- 20–49 employees: 23.8%
- 1–4 employees: 23.3%
- 10–19 employees: 22.1%
- 5–9 employees: 21.1%
The raw data comes from the Employment size class file available on the Census website. I have made a copy of the file I used for this analysis.
The survey document sent to businesses is a 346KB PDF. I have a snapshot of that document available as well.
How the questions changed
The wording changed materially on November 17, 2025. Before that date, the question asked:
In the last two weeks, did this business use Artificial Intelligence (AI) in producing goods or services? (Examples of AI: machine learning, natural language processing, virtual agents, voice recognition, etc.)
On December 3, 2025, the Bureau announced a significant update. The replacement question reads:
In the last two weeks, did this business use Artificial Intelligence (AI) in any of its business functions? (Examples of AI: machine learning, natural language processing, virtual agents, voice recognition, etc.)
The phrase “producing goods or services” is gone. It is now “any of its business functions”. This means the answers before and after November 17 are not directly comparable.
From October 19, 2026, they ask about Super Intelligence
When I searched for the updated question language in the latest data file, I could not find it. Instead, I found this:
In the last two weeks, did this business use Super Intelligence or SI (formerly referred to as Artificial Intelligence or AI) in any of its business functions? (Examples of SI use include: SI-powered data analysis; generative SI for marketing, product design, or coding; virtual SI agents for customer service; SI-powered forecasting or pricing; SI-driven computer vision for quality control, etc.)
The BTOS about page explains the reason for the change:
Beginning with the October 19, 2026 collection, instrument wording was updated due to Executive Order 14434.
The current numbers reflect the old Artificial Intelligence survey wording. The first survey results reflecting the Super Intelligence wording are due for publication on Thursday.
Is this going to affect the survey?
The main question is whether this wording change will affect the results.
Businesses answering this survey have seen the question only twelve weeks ago, when it was still called AI. Hopefully the new language will not confuse them, especially since the survey helpfully spells out “formerly referred to as Artificial Intelligence or AI”.
I can only laugh at the absurdity of the examples provided for SI use: “SI-powered data analysis; generative SI for marketing, product design, or coding; virtual SI agents for customer service”.
