Renaming AI to Super Intelligence Does Not Change Science
A Label Swap That Rewrites the Map
On 29 September 2026, an executive order from US President Donald Trump declared that humanity has entered “a new era of Super Intelligence.” [2] The order instructs federal agencies to retire the phrases “artificial intelligence” and “AI” in favor of “Super Intelligence” and “SI.” This is not a technical reclassification. It is a vocabulary decree — the kind of move that changes what people say before it changes what anyone can measure. The terrain does not move because the legend changed.
The order’s own definition gives the game away. It describes “Super Intelligence” as “the technologies and systems encompassed by the term ‘artificial intelligence.’” In other words, the new label covers precisely the same set of machines the old label covered. Nothing was added to the systems. Something was added to the branding. Trump explained the reasoning at the United Nations last month: the new term “is much more accurate” than artificial intelligence, which “makes it sound fake.” [2] His conclusion: “And it’s not fake.” The argument is about perception, not capability.
This is not an isolated act of nomenclature. In August, when the United States and Canada were feuding over tariffs, Trump ordered federal agencies to refer to Lake Ontario as Lake America. A lake by any other name holds the same water. A system by any other name holds the same weights.
The Gap Between Aspiration and Measurement
Researchers were using the word “superintelligence” long before the executive order existed. Science philosopher Nick Bostrom popularized it in his 2014 book Superintelligence, defining it as “any intellect that greatly exceeds the cognitive performance of humans in virtually all domains of interest.” That is a definition of a destination, not a description of a vehicle. A 2025 petition signed by a host of AI researchers and others called for a slowdown in the development of superintelligence, describing it as a system “that can significantly outperform all humans on essentially all cognitive tasks.” Both definitions describe something that does not yet exist. They are horizon lines, not photographs.
Melanie Mitchell, an AI researcher at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico, points to a deeper problem: the term is still not completely defined. [2] Even the components of human-level intelligence remain undefined. “None of this has rigorous meaning,” she says. “People can use these terms to mean what they want.” That is the crack running through the entire renaming exercise. If the benchmark itself is undefined, then no system can be declared to have crossed it.
By most researchers’ definitions, superintelligence is an aspirational category of systems, not a reality. The executive order does not change that. It changes the sign on the door. The room behind the door is the same room.
Rebooting Public Sentiment by Renaming the Machine
Darrell West, who researches AI policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC, sees the renaming as an effort to rebrand the technology as public sentiment turns against it. The numbers back him up. About 8 in 10 of those surveyed in a US poll last month were worried about the pace of AI development. [1] Nearly 9 in 10 said they are more concerned than excited about the prospect that AI might exceed human intelligence. [1] Those are not margins of ambiguity. They are near-consensus unease.
Trump has repeatedly dismissed worries about AI, posting on social media that “AI taking over the World, destroying Humanity, and all other things bad, is a HOAX.” He has also criticized AI leaders who have called for regulation. West’s reading: “The hope is that changing the name improves public acceptance of the technology” so that “the AI revolution will go forward.” Then comes his verdict: “But I think that is fanciful thinking.” The reception has been mixed. Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk posted on X: “No more AI. SI. It’s better,” and said his company SpaceXAI would be renamed SpaceXSI. OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman continues to use the term AI in his posts. The vocabulary war is already producing defectors and loyalists — not because the technology changed, but because the label did.
