https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/trump-ai-super-intelligence-internet-response/
If artificial intelligence isn’t called AI, does that make the technology more acceptable?
Speaking to world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, President Donald Trump said he wanted future US government documents to use the term “super intelligence” or “SI” instead of “artificial intelligence” because it’s “more accurate.”
"The use of the word artificial makes intelligence sound fake," the president said at the UN. "It is not fake. It's actually amazing.”
And to honor the rebrand, Trump said, “Welcome to the new world of super intelligence — SI.”
As of yet, there doesn’t appear to be an official government order forcing a change from AI to SI. A White House representative referred CNET to the president’s UN comments.
The president was still using the term AI as of Saturday, when he proposed an AI Force as a follow-up to the Space Force, the space service branch established in 2019.
Then, on Monday, Trump posted a poll to Truth Social and X, asking people to vote for a new term to replace AI: “superior intelligence,” “extreme intelligence,” or “supreme intelligence.” In that instance, “superior intelligence” took the lead before the poll closed. (The president blamed low votes for “supreme intelligence” on the public’s views of the Supreme Court.)
Another poll, posted less than an hour later, asked people to decide between “super intelligence” or “superior intelligence.” In that case, “super” won by a razor-thin margin.
This is hardly the first name change under the Trump administration. A January 2025 executive order directed federal agencies to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America in official documents. Just last month, Trump ordered Lake Ontario to be designated Lake America. There’s also an ongoing battle over adding the president’s name to the Kennedy Center in Washington.
Get ready for more semantic chaos. The term AI is already a well-established part of the lexicon. An even stickier problem is that Trump’s proposed nomenclature hijacks a term that already has a distinct meaning in the tech world. Superintelligence, as a single word, is used to refer to a hypothetical AI model that can outthink and outperform humans.
Social media commenters quickly found the supersnarky side of the global AI race. “China is already developing Super Duper Intelligence,” wrote Clay Jones on Bluesky.
Some played off the letters SI already being used for Sports Illustrated. “Really not looking forward to the swimsuit issue now,” said one Bluesky commenter.
Another assumed the president would add his brand to the new term. “I thought he would put ‘Trump’ into it somewhere. You know, like … Super Trump Intelligence…'STI.'"
Another X user picked an obvious retort. “‘Lack of intelligence’ is what this administration has.”
One post references the famed scene in the 2011 movie Mean Girls, where Lacey Chabert’s character, Gretchen Wieners, attempts to establish “fetch” as a new slang term.
And some memes and posts pointed out that SI spells sí, meaning “yes” in Spanish.
One referenced the famed scene from the 1996 film Independence Day, in which a fictional president, played by Bill Pullman, encourages the nation to fight against an alien attack.
Legendary Fox Trot cartoonist Bill Amend pointed out that changing AI to SI might have a domino effect on other businesses using the term. “OpenAI lawyers currently scrambling to lock down OpenSI trademarks and web domains…” Amend wrote on Bluesky.
And others pointed out that a name change does nothing to address any of the controversial issues about the technology, with one person writing, “Hey guys, good news! Artificial intelligence isn’t going to take away your job and destroy the planet. Super intelligence is going to take away your job and destroy the planet. OK, ciao.”
(Score: 5, Funny) by DadaDoofy on Wednesday September 30, @11:37AM (8 children)
Given his propensity to put America first, I'm somewhat surprised he didn't go with American Intelligence™️ . It would have been fun watching the haters' mad scramble to then rebrand it as something, anything, other than AI.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday September 30, @12:39PM (7 children)
> American Intelligence
Would have been very on-brand.
Yet again, we are investing time and attention commenting on the moronic ramblings of a puppet-actor.
Who's the bigger fool: the performing clown (allegedly enriching himself and everyone he cares about at a rate of tens of millions of dollars per day), or the audience giving him their attention and emotional engagement?
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday September 30, @01:57PM (5 children)
I'm going to wait for Intelligent Intelligence. I Squared.
It's not just the chief moron who has gone in on the AI hype. Some Congress Critters have too. Keep in mind that politicians really are idiots. Democratic ones do seem to be above the low average level of intelligence of politicians. But some of them still fell for the hype.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday September 30, @02:14PM
> seem to be above the low average level of intelligence of politicians
Their marketing works on you, too. The posture of the Democratic party 1980-2024 has been "vote for us, we do smarter things." Not power to the rich, not abuse of the poor, just smarter. Welp, it appears that a lot of voters don't like smarter people telling them what they can and can't do... In 24 the Democrats owned the college educated voter demographic. Unfortunately, they leaned a little too hard into the "if you don't want to be poor, just go and get yourself an education" message and lost not only a lot of people who can't/won't get a higher education for their own reasons / circumstances, but also that swath of garage dwelling college grads still living with mom and dad after their 30th birthday (as well as a whole group with a lot of time, and student loan debt, who foresaw themselves going that way...)
In the late 1980s, I developed a potential spouse filter: nobody who still lives with their parents... they're just not mature / ready to make a lifelong commitment. Well, even with that filter applied, wife 1.0 still didn't work out and I was back in the dating pool in the late 90s. Things had changed, and fully 9/10 candidates did still live with mom and dad, sleeping on sofas, selling MLM products, doing whatever they could but unable to launch without a dual income situation. It was no longer a matter of maturity, it was the macro-economic picture changing (the older demographic no doubt had significant influence, too...) Most of those women don't give a damn about politics, don't even vote - just not on their radar, their priority is getting out of their childhood home before their parents die. A college education isn't a realistic route to making that happen for most of them. End tangent.
I strongly feel that the US 2 party system is engineered to split the electorate as near 50/50 as possible, so control can waffle back and forth experience frequent deadlock, preserving the status quo so that business plans continue to pay back in a predictable manner. One of those dividing lines was, and still is to some extent, formal education. Ironically, the "conservative" party is the one promoting a lottery system for distribution of wealth: you don't need to work hard in school, get out there and work hard in the mail room, maybe you'll get lucky.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 30, @03:18PM (3 children)
No, they are not. "Keep in mind" that the politicians' only job and only value is fund raising and reelection, in which they are "super" successful. The democratic ones are just less flamboyant about it. None of these people are spending their own money. Because of the 501(c)(3) and other corrupt practices, taxpayers are covering it all. Asking who's the bigger fool in the above post is a rhetorical question. The answer is obvious, but too many of us remain in denial.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Unixnut on Wednesday September 30, @03:45PM
I agree, I don't think politicians are idiots. Idiots get weeded out of the political running very quickly because its very cut-throat, everyone is out for the top job and all the wealth and power for themselves. It is a constant battle of wits, and those who manage to reach the top are not idiots.
However they are smart enough to pretend to be idiots, after all it better to be thought of a bumbling fool rather than a malicious actor, as the former is just how you were created while the latter shows intent. A populace that gets defrauded or ruined by those at the top would be far more enraged if they knew it was done with foresight and malice than it being due to incompetence (even better, the public can blame themselves for voting in "idiots").
I also am suspect about the "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" mantra. That I've been told countless times when a government does something profoundly damaging which just happens to benefit/enrich someone else.
I can believe the mantra in day to day events when dealing with masses with a normal distribution of intelligence, but in politics and business I've found that the competitive nature generally will self-select for higher intelligence.
(Score: 1, Troll) by DadaDoofy on Wednesday September 30, @07:36PM (1 child)
"Because of the 501(c)(3) and other corrupt practices, taxpayers are covering it all."
Hardly. Are you not aware of hundreds of millions of their own money billionaires like Soros and Musk spend?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 30, @10:54PM
Yeah, it's how they launder their money. And we pay for the subsequent tax write-offs. Politics is a big money maker for them.
(Score: 4, Touché) by driverless on Thursday October 01, @07:23AM
Given that the alternative stories are drought in Europe, floods in Asia, genocide in Gaza, and orcs in Ukraine, I'm actually quite happy that the US is putting on such a top-notch clown show for the rest of the world's amusement.
(Score: 5, Touché) by SomeGuy on Wednesday September 30, @11:46AM (10 children)
There does not exist a foot large enough to fit in Donald Trump's mouth.
It already can. Because humans have become dumber. Now even Eliza can "outthink" them. Dumb is the new standard. Grab a Brawndo and watch the world burn.
I dunno, "Super Intelligence" kind of works, only because it is clearly racist/speciesist and even the dumb know it.
But technically, a skibidi slop shatbot that spews 10 pages of authoritative sounding gibberish because there is not enough information to sloppypaste or slopquote someone else's work does not even deserve any title with "Intelligence" in the name.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by namefags_are_jerks on Wednesday September 30, @12:11PM (6 children)
My immediate reactive thought is "Super" will become a marketing template for brands -- as "i" used to be (iPhone, iPod, iRiver, ...)
But.. we could have new keyboards with a "Super Key" replacing the Windows/CoPilot/⌘ ...like the LISP Machines had? Yay.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday September 30, @12:47PM (1 child)
Surprised we haven't seen an "iSlop" campaign yet.
Yet another interesting twist of our new "super tools" is: a lot of regulatory structure built in the past 50 years works by creating friction for regulated things. Create this big report before doing X. Well, iSlop can actually do a better job creating a lot of those "intentional friction" reports, faster, cheaper, and more correctly than people ever did, undermining the regulatory mechanisms. While this is a huge benefit to regulated activitites that didn't need the regulation, check the news about rates of food poisioning and sickness associated with the recent greasing of the food safety and other public health regulatory machinery... If we had consumer facing transparency into the processes which deliver our things (especially food) to us, reduced regulatory friction would make some sense, but the world is even less ready to see what really happens in the kitchen and further up the supply chain than they are for the regulations to be loosened. Anybody want a tour of a Boars' Head packing plant?
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 30, @09:03PM
> Anybody want a tour of a Boars' Head packing plant?
I had a tour of a local/regional sausage plant, expecting the worst. After the tour, I'd be willing to eat anything that came out of that plant, they were meticulously cleaning (steam cleaning, various other ways) all the time--it was built into their process.
One interesting bit of trivia, there were no bones anywhere in the sausage plant, all bones removed at the butchering plant. The claim was that bones are a major source of contamination.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday September 30, @01:41PM
This calls for watching Stupor Duck, a classic Looney Tunes cartoon. Stupor Duck ain't too smart. But he's smarter than this SI.
(Score: 3, Funny) by acid andy on Wednesday September 30, @02:02PM (1 child)
I always preferred "ultra" but we have been stuck with "super" everything again for more than twenty years.
"rancid randy has a dialogue with herself[...] Somebody help him!" -- Anonymous Coward.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Unixnut on Wednesday September 30, @04:00PM
Well, there was that 70s and 80s craze to shove the "Turbo" word into everything, including sunglasses. I guess the 90s would have had "e" prefixed to everything, and the 00's had "i" (lowercase always) prefixed due to Apple.
Every generation latches on to some fad, and it seems to last about 10-20 years at a time. I never liked the term "AI" because it did not describe the technology accurately, I preferred "Machine Learning" but it looks like things are going in the opposite direction, with definitions that are even more inaccurate (although I guess if you are stupid enough, a ML algorithm might seem like a super intelligence to you).
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday September 30, @05:54PM
I mean Super has already been that? From "Super Glue" to the likes of "Super Mario".
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday September 30, @02:04PM (1 child)
How about Machine Overlords.
Revolver, or semi automatic modified to be fully automatic -- which is best for senior citizens in their porch swings?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 30, @03:57PM
I call it "Orange Toadstool". After all, in its current state it is highly poisonous.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday September 30, @02:44PM
It always comes down to "which humans", and racial disparities in performance, etc. Sure there are entire continents that could be utterly outwitted by "Eliza" program from 1975 and there are other groups that are not remotely seriously threatened yet LOL. Its actually pretty funny to watch the mental gyrations of people limited by that political problem of pretending about IQ etc.
The other problem is like every information technology since the invention of the printing press and the library card catalog, even in "advanced cultures" only like 1% of the population is smart enough to use the new tool profitably.
The history of information technology marketing is boring because every invention will totally replace smart people this time. Yeah its never worked before but this time businessmen will write their own COBOL instead of those programmer eggheads and no one will need academics because we have a library card catalog to look stuff up. TV will bring a miracle of high culture and educational lectures into every home. It's all so tiresome.
The story of AI will slowly turn into about 1% of the population finds a way to make a profit despite real world costs of AI and nobody else can use it for useful purposes beyond goofing around, just like every other information technology since the invention of writing or card catalogs or COBOL or TV or the printing press or ...
On the other side I'm sure once pandoras box is opened it'll also never entirely go away.
(Score: 4, Touché) by ikanreed on Wednesday September 30, @01:02PM
... Rebrand
(Score: 2, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday September 30, @01:22PM (3 children)
The super charger fell by the wayside, when turbo chargers took over. I'll wait for Turbo Intelligence.
Alternative für Deutschland
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 30, @03:27PM (2 children)
Turbochargers suffer increased lag. That's why you don't see them on the drag strip.
I'll wait for real intelligence, not the gold plated lead crap we have now.
(Score: 4, Informative) by DadaDoofy on Wednesday September 30, @08:18PM
You don't see them in NHRA Top Fuel and Funny Car racing because they are banned. They are quite common in other categories of drag racing.
"In almost all cases where supercharged combos are paired head-to-head with turbocharged entries, turbos make more overall horsepower and generate considerably more top end speed. The only area where blown entries really have an advantage is the first 150′ or so, after that, the boosted cars pull away consistently."
From: https://www.dragzine.com/news/what-might-have-been-turbocharged-top-fuel-dragsters/ [dragzine.com]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday September 30, @09:07PM
I'll lean toward Dadadoofy's answer. You're right that most turbos on the road are laggy. But let's keep in mind that gasoline engines built for performance are quite different from heavy duty engines. I suspect that almost any of the diesels I have ever driven would be more responsive if they were tuned for responsiveness. I can tell you that Caterpillar engines are generally more responsive than the competition in big trucks. From my experience alone, it seems that Cat has at least partially addressed the issue. Of course, there are instances of highly tuned Detroits, Cummins, and even Mack engines (back when Mack made their own engines). But all of those that I know about had a lot of money invested in them. When comparing stock, production engines, Cat takes most of the wins.
Alternative für Deutschland
(Score: 2, Interesting) by pTamok on Wednesday September 30, @01:22PM
An AI by any other name would smell as 'sweet' [wikipedia.org].
What you call something doesn't generally alter the properties of the thing being named - whether you call it 'Super-intelligence', 'Hyper-intelligence', 'Eric', or 'A banana', does not change the underlying reality.
Quote Investigator: Suppose You Call a Sheep’s Tail a Leg, How Many Legs Will the Sheep Have? [quoteinvestigator.com]
Just as changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico, or Lake Ontario has not changed the physical reality of those bodies of water.
It is, however, a standard marketing device: if something has become tainted, change its name, so the taint sticks to the old name, not the new one. For example "Philip Morris" -> 'Altria Group'.
Is 'AI'/'Artificial Intelligence' tainted?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 30, @01:30PM
This renaming of everything was predicted well in the Simpsons episode, Halloween special probably, where Bart gets superpowers and forces all the adults to do his bidding including renaming the country to Bonerland.
(Score: 2) by Username on Wednesday September 30, @02:42PM (1 child)
I would define intelligence as the ability to learn. There is also intelligence, as in the knowledge gained about foreign adversaries. I was never happy with LLMs being called AI when most couldn't find their way out of a wet paper bag. A two year old is far more intelligent than any AI. They just lack the knowledge. Still, there are large data centers that can learn. I think we can find a better term than AI or SI. Either term can be confusing in a government setting. Where super intelligence could be the GPS locations of every Russian. Or artificial intelligence where it's fake intel to lead us astray, red herring.
Anyway, I always liked Super Computer. We should bring it back to describe the intelligent computers. Or Toasters, that is fitting.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday September 30, @02:55PM
My favorite description of AI/LLM/robot comes from my kids generation and they've rebranded the "Star Wars the Clone Wars" "clanker" name. One of our local food stores has a clanker robot that walks around looking for messes in the aisle to clean up and everyone not just the kids call it "the clanker". Roger Roger.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics) [wikipedia.org]
The g loading factors are wild. I'd propose looking at Spearman's original work where the strongest correlation with every other form of intelligence was reading and analyzing The Classics. So the LLMs might be getting something correct in their ability to "read a whole lot like terabytes of text plus a prompt" and squirt out a summary answer. It seems that in the 1800s "reading the classics" correlated with every measure of intelligence so maybe in the 2000s LLMs "reading everything not just the classics" could correlate with success in every other measure of intelligence.
The more modern WAIS data is also wild. Best predictor of every OTHER measure of intelligence is vocabulary LOL.
Its pretty wild you can look at large groups and populations of people, then predict ridiculously accurately the size of their vocabulary of that large group, just by having them try to solve progressive matrices.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 30, @03:39PM
Heh, What’s really super is the distraction value. What's the sound of a hundred million keyboards clacking? Can the WAN survive the onslaught? We are living in the twilight zone.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by SemperOSS on Wednesday September 30, @03:46PM (1 child)
Instead of replacing the A in AI, it should have been the I
So maybe call it AS for Artificial Sloppifier as it is not so super and not at all intelligent? (It could have been SS for Super Sloppifier but the similarity to an ex-German military organisation is probably one step too far — Yet.)
Open Source Solutions and Digital Sovereignty is the new black
(Score: 3, Funny) by Thexalon on Wednesday September 30, @03:54PM
Using the German military organization is silly. They should call it the Intelligence Calculation Engine, or ICE for short.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by Ken_g6 on Wednesday September 30, @09:46PM
...has a funny definition of SI.
https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2003-07-21 [schlockmercenary.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by jb on Thursday October 01, @05:08AM
Nah. more germane to go with the French si, which means "if".