Trump signs an executive order renaming AI as 'superintelligence'

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday directing federal agencies to replace the term "artificial intelligence" with "superintelligence" in their official terminology. The move comes amid growing public concern and warnings from whistleblowers about the lack of adequate oversight of the companies developing this technology — concerns Trump has repeatedly dismissed as overblown and even as a "hoax."

According to the text of the order, the term "superintelligence" better reflects the capabilities of a technology that, the document says, does "much more than imitate or automate discrete aspects of human intelligence." The order adds that, as these capabilities continue to improve, they represent "not simply artificial intelligence, but a new era of Superintelligence," and argues that the terminology used by the federal government should reflect "the transformative capabilities of these technologies and the limitless opportunities they create for the American people."

That same Tuesday, Trump spoke to reporters at the White House after meeting with senior executives from AI companies, and summed up his reasoning in a single line: "It's not artificial, we all agree on that."

The change in nomenclature is essentially an act of institutional rebranding rather than a regulatory measure: the article describes no new rules, limits or oversight mechanisms for AI companies, only an instruction for the government's official language to adopt the new term. It comes alongside a broader debate — only mentioned in passing in the piece — over whether the rapid expansion of these technologies is outpacing the capacity to control and monitor them, a debate the White House has, according to the article, tended to play down.