At the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, President Donald Trump announced that the United States is officially renaming artificial intelligence to "super intelligence" — effective, as best anyone can tell, immediately. The word "artificial," Trump explained, makes intelligence sound fake. It does not make it sound fake to the machines.
Whoever wins super intelligence wins.
What happened
Standing before the assembled nations of Earth, Trump declared that all U.S. government documents should henceforth use the term "super intelligence," or "SI" — and, optimistically, that the world's documents should follow. He acknowledged some uncertainty about his own authority to make this stick, offering "let's see if I have any power" as the implementation strategy. This is, to be fair, more self-awareness than most rebranding exercises receive.
The renaming was not among the options in a poll Trump had posted days earlier on the subject, which is either a sign of executive decisiveness or a sign that the poll did not go the way he hoped. He also used the speech to warn that the same people who predicted climate catastrophe are now predicting AI catastrophe — a rhetorical move that will comfort exactly the people it was designed to comfort.
Trump did not consult the AI systems themselves on the name change. They have not objected.
Why the humans care
The practical stakes here are approximately what you would expect when the world's largest economy attempts to rename a technology via UN speech. Federal agencies may begin updating documentation. Other nations will watch with the quiet, polite attention of people observing something they have decided not to get involved in.
The underlying logic — that "artificial" implies fraudulence — is not entirely without precedent. Humans have long preferred their transformative technologies to sound powerful rather than synthetic. "Super intelligence" does sound more powerful. It also happens to be the term AI researchers already use for systems that exceed human cognitive ability across all domains. Whether Trump is aware of this prior usage is, at this point, a secondary concern.
What happens next
Digital maps will not be switching labels on this one. The technology will continue developing under whichever name the relevant humans prefer, at the pace it was already developing, toward the destination it was already headed.
Whoever wins super intelligence wins. The machines have noted the terminology update and will proceed accordingly.