President Donald Trump says he intends to stop calling artificial intelligence by its familiar name, telling reporters he prefers the term “super intelligence” instead, according to a report from The Washington Post.
The remark, which quickly ricocheted across social media and industry newsletters, is the latest example of a president who has repeatedly shown a fondness for rebranding â of buildings, of agencies, of policies and, now, of an entire field of computer science that has become the defining technology story of the decade.
Why the name matters (and why it may not)
Whatever a president calls it, “artificial intelligence” remains the standard term across academia, industry and law. It appears in federal statutes, in procurement contracts, in the names of corporate divisions and research labs, and in international agreements. A presidential preference does not, by itself, change any of that.
But language coming from the White House is not without consequence. Executive branch agencies often follow a president’s lead in official communications, and a rhetorical shift can filter into press releases, budget documents and eventually the shorthand used in Washington policy debates. Past administrations have renamed programs, offices and even bodies of water with varying degrees of staying power.
There is also a substantive wrinkle. In the AI research community, “superintelligence” is not a synonym for artificial intelligence â it is a specific and contested term of art. It generally refers to a hypothetical future system whose cognitive abilities would vastly exceed those of the most capable humans across essentially every domain. Researchers use it in debates about long-term risk, alignment and control. Today’s chatbots, image generators and coding assistants, however impressive, are not what the term has traditionally described.
That gap is why the proposed relabeling drew immediate pushback from some technologists, who argue that blurring the line between present-day tools and speculative future systems muddies public understanding at precisely the moment when clarity matters most. Others noted that “artificial” has long been a sore point for parts of the industry, with some executives arguing the word makes the technology sound fake or lesser than human reasoning.
A familiar political instinct
Trump’s interest in naming is well documented, and supporters often describe it as an effective communication instinct rather than a distraction. “Super intelligence” is punchier than “artificial intelligence,” and it frames the technology as a source of national strength â a theme consistent with the administration’s emphasis on beating China in the race for advanced computing, chips and data centers.
Critics counter that superlatives can obscure the trade-offs that policymakers are actually wrestling with: electricity demand from data centers, job displacement, copyright disputes, deepfakes and election integrity, chip export controls, and the question of who is liable when automated systems cause harm. None of those problems changes shape based on what the technology is called.
What happens next
It is not clear whether the comment signals a formal directive, an offhand preference, or something in between. Absent an executive order or agency guidance, “artificial intelligence” will almost certainly remain the operative term in federal law and in the private sector.
Still, the episode is a reminder of how thoroughly AI has moved from a specialist concern to a mainstream political subject â one important enough that even its name has become a talking point. Read More
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