According to American media outlet Axios, U.S. President Donald Trump posted on his social platform ‘Truth Social’ on October 8th local time, saying: “The White House considers anyone who uses the term ‘Artificial Intelligence’ instead of the widely accepted and more accurate term ‘Super Intelligence’ as an enemy!” Trump even capitalized the word ‘enemy’.
This is not the first time Trump has requested that artificial intelligence be renamed.
On September 23 this year, Trump proposed during the general debate of the United Nations General Assembly that the term “artificial intelligence” should be renamed “super intelligence”. The reason for this change is that the word “Artificial” can make people think that this technology is not real.
"It sounds fake, but it's not fake, actually it's incredibly great." Trump said that the new name sounds much better.
On September 29, Trump officially signed an executive order requiring the U.S. federal government to use "Super Intelligence" and its abbreviation "SI" in official documents, websites, and public communications, gradually replacing the terms "artificial intelligence" and "AI". However, this order does not mandate corporate entities in the U.S. to change their names, nor does it specify any penalties for violations of the requirement.
Trump's request for a name change quickly received responses from some American technology giants.
According to Axios's report on the 1st, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang used the term 'superintelligence' multiple times during discussions about data centers at the White House. After accidentally saying 'AI', he immediately corrected himself and said with a smile, 'I will become more proficient in this area.'
Huang Renxun also used the term "super intelligence" in his social media posts. Axios said that among the technology executives who participated in the White House discussions, Huang Renxun was particularly active.
Trump's ally and CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk, also joined the renaming effort. He announced that his company's artificial intelligence division, SpaceXAI, would be renamed SpaceXSI, and that the term "Super Intelligence" would be used on the social platform X.
According to some tech industry insiders cited by Axios, some companies are willing to cooperate with Trump by using the term "SI" when meeting with the president or dealing with the federal government. However, they do not believe that this new term will become widely used in other situations.
Another American artificial intelligence company, OpenAI, also has no plans to change its name. The company’s CEO, Sam Altman, previously stated that OpenAI will retain its current name.
The acceptance of this new name by the American public is also limited. According to a poll conducted by YouGov, cited by Axios, 53% of respondents believe that “artificial intelligence” is a more appropriate term, while only 9% chose “superintelligence”.
Just as Trump asked everyone to abandon “AI”, the White House itself has not yet completed the name change.
Axios found that as of the 8th, the website of the White House Office of Technology Policy still used the term "artificial intelligence". The White House changed the text on the government's artificial intelligence website AI.gov to the prominent "SI.gov" that day, but the actual URL remained AI.gov. When accessing SI.gov directly at that time, the user was still directed to the wrong page.
Regarding why even the White House website did not fully implement Trump’s request for changes in names, the White House did not respond to Axios’ request for comment.
