Trump Tells the UN the US Will Rename Artificial Intelligence "Super Intelligence"

My take: Speaking at the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, President Donald Trump announced that US official documents will stop saying "artificial intelligence" and start saying "super intelligence," abbreviated SI. His argument was that the word "artificial" makes intelligence "sound fake," and he added: "It is not fake. It's actually amazing." On Saturday the 19th he had posted a poll on Truth Social with three options ("Superior Intelligence," "Extreme Intelligence," and "Supreme Intelligence"), and the first won with 41% of more than 64,000 votes. Here is the odd part: "super intelligence," the name he actually announced, was not one of the three options.

Here is the piece almost no headline explains. "Superintelligence" was already a technical term, and it does not mean the AI we use today: it describes a future AI that would outperform people at nearly everything. It is both the industry's long-term goal and the biggest fear of the people warning about its risks. So as of today the same two letters mean two very different things depending on who is using them. And the timing makes the confusion worse: on Wednesday the UN Security Council holds a session on AI convened by France, with Yoshua Bengio, Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, and Clément Delangue, focused precisely on the risk of losing control of the most advanced systems.

For you and me nothing practical changes: ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini do exactly the same thing today as yesterday. What does change is the noise, because you will see "SI" used for two different things and that invites both confusion and hype. My advice is simple: when you read "SI" this week, ask yourself whether they mean everyday AI or that future AI that does not exist yet. Do you think the new name clarifies anything, or does it just add confusion?