The US Government Has Renamed AI. It's Now Called Super Intelligence.
The U.S. Government Has Renamed AI. It Is Now Called Super Intelligence.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on September 29, 2026, directing all executive branch agencies to retire the terms "artificial intelligence" and "AI" from official use. The replacement: "Super Intelligence" and its abbreviation, "SI." The order applies to official correspondence, public communications, agency websites, and policy documents where legally permissible. This is not a suggestion from the White House. It is U.S. policy.
The order came out of a high-profile White House lunch with the chief executives of Nvidia, Meta, Google, Anthropic, OpenAI, and X — a gathering that also produced a voluntary, morally binding safety accord among the industry's largest players. The rebrand and the accord together signal the administration's posture: keep the technology moving fast, shape the narrative around it, and let the industry police itself.
Why "Artificial" Was Always the Wrong Word
The argument for the rename is more straightforward than it might appear. According to Politico, Trump's stated reasoning is that the word "artificial" makes the technology sound fake. That is not an unreasonable read of the language.
Consider what the word "artificial" signals in everyday use. Artificial sweetener. Artificial flavoring. Artificial turf. In every common context, "artificial" means a lesser substitute for the real thing. Something manufactured to approximate something genuine. Something that tries to pass as authentic but falls short by definition.
That is a strange word to attach to technology that reasons, synthesizes, generates original output, and in many domains outperforms human specialists. Calling Claude or GPT-5 "artificial" intelligence is a bit like calling a 787 an artificial bird. The word stopped fitting a while ago. The industry kept using it anyway because it was already embedded everywhere — in academic literature, in product names, in regulatory frameworks, in public consciousness.
"Artificial" implies a pale substitute. "Super" implies a capability beyond the ordinary. For this technology, only one of those descriptions is accurate.
What "Super" Changes
The prefix "super" carries a fundamentally different set of associations. Supercomputer. Superconductor. Supersonic. In each case, the word signals capability that exceeds the ordinary baseline — not a replacement for something real, but an amplification of it. That is a much more accurate description of what these systems actually do.
Trump's framing in the executive order leans into this directly. "Super Intelligence" is described as representing the technology's limitless potential, its rapid advancement, and its ability to amplify human ingenuity. Whether one agrees with the politics or not, the semantic case holds up. SI as an abbreviation is also clean, short, and carries none of the accumulated baggage that "AI" has collected over thirty years of science fiction, labor displacement headlines, and chatbot frustrations.
For the industry, a federal rebrand at this scale offers something valuable: a fresh frame. Every anxiety the public has ever had about "AI" — job loss, deepfakes, autonomous weapons, HAL 9000 — lives inside those two letters. "SI" starts with a blank slate. That is not nothing.
An Executive Order With a Clock
What distinguishes this from a campaign talking point or a summit soundbite is the mechanism behind it. Executive orders carry the force of law within the executive branch. This one sets a 60-day window for science and technology advisors to review how the new terminology might interact with or supersede existing statutory definitions in federal law. That is the work of serious policy implementation, not a press release.
Federal agencies — from the Department of Defense to the National Science Foundation to the FTC — will need to audit their public-facing materials, internal documents, and communications for the old terminology and update accordingly. That is a significant operational undertaking. The administration is treating this as real.
The global research and standards community currently uses "AI" across academic literature, international discussions, and technical specifications. That will take time to shift. But when the world's largest technology market moves on language, and moves officially, the direction of travel is set.
Whoever wins SI is going to win. That framing — from the President of the United States — tells you everything about how the administration views the stakes.
The Bigger Picture
The rebrand did not happen in isolation. It came out of a White House summit where the administration and the industry's largest companies aligned on a voluntary safety accord — no federal mandates, no slowdowns, no regulatory frameworks imposed from outside. Internal and external safety reviews, conducted by the companies themselves, on their own timelines.
The administration's position is clear: the United States cannot afford to slow down. Trump said it directly at the summit — "Whoever wins SI is going to win" — with China as the implied competitor. The rename, the accord, and the summit together form a coherent strategy. Accelerate. Reframe the narrative. Keep government oversight light and voluntary. Let American companies lead.
The order is in effect. The industry that helped shape this moment is already aligned behind it. The term "Super Intelligence" now carries the weight of U.S. federal policy, the backing of the country's largest technology companies, and a clearer, more accurate description of what these systems actually do. Washington has made its call. The rest of the world is next.
Aaron Rose is a software engineer and technology writer, covering Super Intelligence policy, developer platforms, and emerging technology.