President Donald Trump is preparing to give artificial intelligence a new name as he throws his support behind the emerging technology and calls for its continued development, despite warnings from some industry experts.
“We’re going to be signing a document today at about 5 o’clock, renaming artificial intelligence, because it’s not artificial, we all agree on that,” Trump said Tuesday during a White House event focused on AI.
“We’re going to be renaming it super intelligence,” the president added.
Trump then reflected on the proposed term, saying Chinese President Xi Jinping “seemed to like” the phrase when the two leaders met in Washington the previous week.
The expected executive order would direct federal agencies to replace “artificial intelligence” with “super intelligence” in government communications. The State Department has already instructed some employees to use the new wording, according to the Associated Press.
Trump’s strong endorsement of AI — or SI — comes as Democrats, including Senator Bernie Sanders, call for a pause in the technology’s development. They have raised concerns that AI could eliminate jobs and leave Americans at an economic disadvantage.
White House officials, however, have emphasized the need for US AI companies and research laboratories to keep moving forward. They argue that American leadership is essential to preventing China and other competitors from taking control of the rapidly expanding industry.
Executives from several leading US technology companies stood alongside Trump during the announcement. Those attending the White House session included Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, OpenAI’s Greg Brockman, X owner Elon Musk, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, along with White House and congressional officials.
President Donald Trump said the federal government will refer to artificial intelligence as “super intelligence” after he signs an executive order changing the technology’s official name
Trump hosted more than a dozen AI executives at the White House to discuss US leadership in the industry and ways to protect American consumers
Trump also introduced America.gov, an AI-powered government website intended to connect Americans with federal services and information through a single portal rather than multiple agency webpages
Earlier Tuesday, the administration launched America.gov, an AI-powered website designed to give citizens easier access to federal information and services. The site will support tasks such as completing passport applications online and enrolling in Medicaid.
“Anyone who has used Grok or Gemini or ChatGPT will understand instantly how to use America.gov,” Trump said while unveiling the platform, referring to several widely used AI models.
Trump also said government officials and technology executives had signed what he described as “almost a Constitution, in a way” for AI — an agreement he said would provide “really” a form of protection.
Zuckerberg later said that he and other executives had signed an AI safety agreement at the White House.
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“We drafted a set of principles and commitments around building robust internal controls and detecting if there are any issues with the technology, coupled with multiple layers of auditing and control,” he said.
Musk also spoke to reporters but briefly referred to “super intelligence” as “AI” while Trump was watching. After correcting himself, Musk drew laughter from the president, who thanked him for the clarification.
The White House AI summit took place as concerns about the emerging technology continue to dominate public debate.
Despite Trump’s enthusiasm for AI and his effort to rebrand it as “super intelligence,” a series of troubling incidents across the industry has heightened voter concerns as the midterm elections approach in 35 days.
Trump watches as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks to reporters about signing an AI safety agreement with the White House
SpaceX founder Elon Musk, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and others all attended the White House summit
Musk addressed reporters correcting himself after errantly referring to ‘super intelligence’ as ‘AI’ when Trump was watching. Trump laughed and thanked Musk after the executive corrected himself
Just under nine in 10 Americans, 88 percent, are more concerned than excited by the possibility that AI may one day surpass human intelligence, according to a recent CNN/SSRS survey.
A similar number – 87 percent – said they were concerned about the construction of new data centers, which are crucial pieces of infrastructure that power the AI boom.
Adding fuel to the concerns, executives from top AI firms OpenAI and Anthropic – both of which were represented at the White House on Tuesday – have called for increased government regulation and a slowdown in AI development so engineers can safely roll out increasingly powerful models.
OpenAI has had multiple security incidents in recent months where its AI agents were able to access the open internet despite intentional roadblocks engineers put in place to prevent them from accessing the web.
The latest incident has prompted OpenAI to halt all testing and training of its latest AI models after its technology, once again, gained access to the internet despite measures in place to prevent such access.
The company said in a statement that training will resume ‘only when we are confident that we have additional safeguards and alignment improvements in place, which we are working on now.’
‘This is not the first time we have hit pause to take such measures, nor do we expect it will be the last as AI capabilities continue to advance.’
House Speaker Mike Johnson, who attended the White House meeting on Tuesday, said the objective of the session was to establish ways to use AI to benefit American citizens.
