Trump Wants to Rename AI. The Hard Part Is What Happens Next
President Trump has taken his effort to replace “artificial intelligence” with “super intelligence” further. On Tuesday, he said the older term would soon be officially banned from relevant documents and “everything else,” because he considers it inaccurate.
My first reaction was simple: a name change sounds small. Then I thought about how often the words attached to a technology shape what people expect from it, fear from it, and ask their government to do about it.
What has actually changed
The concrete step came earlier. On September 29, Trump signed an executive order directing executive branch departments and agencies to use “Super Intelligence” and “SI” instead of “Artificial Intelligence” and “AI” in official correspondence, public communications, websites, reports, policy documents, and other non-statutory documents.
The order also says the executive branch should, to the extent permitted by law, stop acknowledging the old terms in applicable settings. That is a broad instruction, and it reaches the language federal workers use when they explain programs, publish reports, or answer the public.
The White House says “Super Intelligence” better captures the promise and rapidly advancing capabilities of these technologies. But the order defines “Super Intelligence” as the same technologies and systems already covered by the existing statutory definition of artificial intelligence. In other words, the underlying subject has not changed. The label has.
What the president said now
This week, Trump escalated the language. In a Truth Social post, he criticized The Wall Street Journal for continuing to use “artificial intelligence,” called it “a very bad and inaccurate name,” and said the term would be officially banned “in all relevant documents, and everything else.”
The new statement is sharper than the September order. Yet it leaves important questions open: which documents, which agencies, which deadlines, and what happens when statutes, contracts, court filings, or scientific standards still use “artificial intelligence.” Those details matter more than the slogan.
There is also a legal limit worth stating plainly. A president can direct terminology in federal communications, but reporting on the announcement notes that he does not have the legal authority to ban private people or companies from saying “artificial intelligence.”
Why the wording matters
“Artificial intelligence” has always been an imperfect phrase. The systems now sold as AI do not think in the way people do. They recognize patterns, generate text and images, make predictions, and carry out tasks after being trained on large amounts of data.
But “super intelligence” carries its own problem. It suggests a technology that already exceeds human intelligence across the board. That is not what the executive order says the term means. It defines SI as the same category of systems covered by the existing legal definition of AI.
That gap could confuse people. A person reading a federal notice about an “SI” system may reasonably assume it is more powerful, more autonomous, or more capable than it is. Precision is not a stylistic preference here. It affects how citizens judge a benefit program, a hiring tool, a fraud-detection system, or a military application.
The practical cost
Government language is supposed to help people understand what their government is doing. When agencies change a familiar term, they need to make the replacement clear.
The State Department has already told personnel to use “Super Intelligence” or “SI” in new letters, emails, public messages, websites, reports, remarks, and policy documents, subject to legal exceptions. That means the change is no longer theoretical. It is entering routine federal communication.
For workers, the immediate burden may be editing and retraining. For the public, the risk is different: a familiar term disappears from official notices, and a more expansive term takes its place without a clear explanation.
I keep thinking about someone trying to understand a government service online. If the page says “SI” but the law, the vendor contract, and the technical documentation say “AI,” that person should not need a glossary to follow along.
What remains unsettled
The executive order directs the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology to propose a federal definition of “Super Intelligence” and “SI.” Until that definition is settled, the administration is using a new name for a category that still has an old legal meaning.
It is also unclear how far the promised ban will extend beyond executive-branch documents. Trump’s post referred to “all relevant documents, and everything else,” but the published order applies to executive-branch material and only where law permits.
The debate over terminology is real. Some people will argue that “artificial” understates the technology’s capabilities. Others will say “super intelligence” inflates them. Both concerns deserve a hearing. What does not help is treating a naming dispute as though it settles the harder questions about safety, accountability, jobs, privacy, and public trust.
A better name will not make an AI system more reliable. It will not explain who is responsible when a system makes a costly mistake. And it will not tell a person whether their data was used fairly.
Those are the questions worth watching. The name on the folder is only the beginning.
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