Trump’s AI Rebrand Wins Silicon Valley Converts but Not the Language War
Trump’s AI Rebrand Wins Silicon Valley Converts but Not the Language War
Trump’s campaign to purge “artificial intelligence” from official language began with a broader argument: the word artificial makes intelligence sound fake. At the United Nations, he promised to rename the technology “super intelligence,” as his administration pressed a pro-development view that safety concerns are overstated and the US must build faster.
The push became policy on September 29, when an executive order directed federal agencies to use “Super Intelligence” and “SI” in place of AI where legally possible. The order borrows the existing federal definition of AI, however—an overlap that underscores critics’ objection that superintelligence normally means a hypothetical system vastly beyond human capability, not today’s tools.
Federal implementation has been uneven. The former Center for AI Standards and Innovation became the Center for Advancing Innovation and Standards for Super Intelligence, or CAISSI. Yet the White House’s own science-policy site still referenced “artificial intelligence,” while AI.gov was visually relabeled SI.gov even though its underlying URL remained unchanged and SI.gov led to an error page.
Then came Trump’s sharper enforcement-by-rhetoric. In a Truth Social post, he declared that anyone using “Artificial Intelligence” rather than the “highly accepted new and more accurate term” was “THE ENEMY!” The order itself sets no penalty for using AI, and private companies are not bound by it.
Still, major executives moved quickly. Elon Musk pledged to change SpaceXAI to SpaceXSI, and Salesforce chief Marc Benioff announced: “The era of Super Intelligence is here. AIForce is officially SIForce.” Nvidia also folded “super intelligence research” into a $1 billion science commitment, while Microsoft’s Satya Nadella repeatedly used the new phrase in a post urging an AI “emergency brake.”
That corporate accommodation may please the White House. But the linguistic reality remains stubborn: AI is entrenched among the public, in the industry and, awkwardly, in the administration trying to erase it.
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