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In a speech before the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, President Donald Trump announced that he is renaming artificial intelligence, or AI, directing all U.S. agencies to call it “super intelligence” and encouraging the world community to follow suit.
The proposed name change comes as public concerns are mounting regarding the technology’s unregulated expansion, prompting tech experts and some industry heads to call for a slowdown of AI’s growth.
“The United States totally rejects any attempt to construct a globalist scheme to control for the artificial intelligence being spoken of so much now, hereinafter called ‘super intelligence,'” Trump said. “Changing the name.”
He continued:
The use of the word artificial makes intelligence sound fake. … From this point forward, all of United States documents and hopefully the world’s will be changed to use the much more accurate term super as opposed to artificial.
“Welcome to the new world of super intelligence — SI. Let’s see if that goes,” Trump added.
“It sounds much better.”
Days before his UN speech, Trump surveyed his Truth Social followers on the idea of changing AI’s name. Trump provided users with three choices in his initial post: “super intelligence,” “extreme intelligence,” or “superior intelligence.” In a later post, he removed the “extreme” option, and “super intelligence” defeated “superior” by a 2 to 1 margin in the unscientific poll.
Trump has attempted to rename a number of things during his second presidential term, despite widespread opposition from Americans. His renaming of Lake Ontario to “Lake America” amid a trade dispute with Canada is opposed by 63 percent of voters, according to a recent Reuters poll. And nearly 6 in 10 Americans believe Trump has “gone too far” in his attempt to add his name to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, a CNN poll found.
Trump has ardently defended AI’s expansion, even as industry experts warn about the potential harms of the technology. Calling himself a “hoax buster” in a Truth Social post last week, Trump suggested those with concerns were “treasonous.” In a separate post, he denounced calls for regulations on AI, calling himself the only “guardrail” needed.
It was revealed last week by sources familiar with the situation that a report submitted by a military analyst, relying on unfounded information from AI, nearly led to an attack on a Chinese ship near the Middle East. Such an attack could have potentially started a war with China, one source said.
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