Super intelligence is the term US President Donald Trump has proposed adopting in place of artificial intelligence, arguing that the new label is “more accurate”. Speaking to world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly, the president said he wanted future US government documents to use “super intelligence” or “SI” rather than AI.
“The use of the word artificial makes intelligence sound fake,” Trump told the UN. “It is not fake. It’s actually amazing.” He went on to declare, “Welcome to the new world of super intelligence — SI.”
Despite the announcement, no official government order compelling the change from AI to SI appears to have been issued. The president was still using the term AI on Saturday, when he proposed an AI Force as a successor to the Space Force, the space service branch established in 2019.
Online Polls and a Series of Rebrands
On Monday, Trump posted a poll to Truth Social and X, inviting people to vote for a replacement term: “superior intelligence”, “extreme intelligence” or “supreme intelligence”. “Superior intelligence” led before the poll closed, with the president attributing the low vote for “supreme intelligence” to public views of the Supreme Court.
A second poll, published less than an hour later, asked voters to choose between “super intelligence” and “superior intelligence”. On that occasion, “super” won by a narrow margin.
This is not the first renaming effort under the current administration. A January 2025 executive order directed federal agencies to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America in official documents. More recently, Trump ordered Lake Ontario to be designated Lake America. There is also an ongoing dispute over adding the president’s name to the Kennedy Center in Washington.
The term AI is already an established part of everyday language, which creates a practical challenge for any switch. A further complication is that “superintelligence”, written as a single word, already carries a distinct meaning within the technology sector, where it refers to a hypothetical AI model capable of outthinking and outperforming humans.
Social Media Reaction
The proposal prompted a wave of commentary online. One Bluesky user, Clay Jones, wrote that “China is already developing Super Duper Intelligence”. Others noted that the initials “SI” are already associated with Sports Illustrated, with one commenter remarking they were “really not looking forward to the swimsuit issue now”.
Another user speculated that the president might incorporate his own brand into the term, suggesting “Super Trump Intelligence” or “STI”. A separate X user offered a pointed response, writing that “‘lack of intelligence’ is what this administration has”.
As it stands, no formal directive has replaced the term artificial intelligence across US government documentation.
