U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday calling for the term “superintelligence” to replace “artificial intelligence” in the official language used by federal agencies.
The order directs federal departments and agencies to use “superintelligence” and the English abbreviation “SI” in official correspondence, public communications, policy documents and other non-legal texts. It also instructs them to stop using the terms “artificial intelligence” and “AI” in those texts.
A federal definition will be prepared
The President’s Assistant for Science and Technology will prepare a proposed federal definition of “superintelligence” and “SI” to reflect the continuing advancement of the technological frontier. The assignment will also include identifying any additional presidential steps that may be needed to implement the definition.
White House defends change by highlighting opportunity
The White House said the terminology change aims to reflect the “tremendous opportunity” offered by emerging technologies. The administration said the United States is the world leader in superintelligence and that the terminology used should reflect these technologies’ capabilities and potential.
The administration also described the United States as the country where artificial intelligence was born. It argued that, in the more than 70 years since the technology became a field of research, the United States has been a leader in the development and use of artificial intelligence.
Trump signed the order after a White House “Super Intelligence” summit with about 20 tech leaders, including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, xAI’s Elon Musk, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, Google’s Sundar Pichai, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, OpenAI’s Greg Brockman, Palantir’s Alex Karp and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Participants signed a voluntary “White House Accord on Super Intelligence” committing the companies to self-regulation.
