President Donald Trump signed an executive order Tuesday evening directing executive branch agencies to replace the terms artificial intelligence and AI with super intelligence and SI in official communications, websites, reports, policy documents, and other non-statutory materials.
The Sept. 29 order also directs the assistant to the president for science and technology to submit proposed legislative language within 60 days that would establish a federal definition of SI and assess whether existing statutory references to AI should be changed.
The proposal must assess whether the new definition should modify or replace the existing statutory definition of AI, identify any related statutory amendments, and recommend additional presidential or executive action needed to implement the definition across the executive branch.
The order defines SI as covering the same technologies and systems included in the current statutory definition of artificial intelligence.
“We don’t want to hear artificial because it’s not artificial. It’s very powerful,” Trump said Tuesday morning while previewing the order at the launch of America.gov.
According to a White House fact sheet, the administration wants federal terminology to reflect the expanding capabilities of today’s advanced AI systems.
“The name Super Intelligence conveys the true capabilities of the technologies being developed today, unlocking new forms of human creativity and empowering Americans to achieve what was previously impossible – not simply imitating or automating human intelligence as is implied by the term ‘Artificial Intelligence,’” the fact sheet says.
The change does not require agencies to revise previously issued regulations, presidential actions, contracts, grants, or other historical documents.
The directive on SI formalizes a terminology change Trump began promoting publicly last week.
During his Sept. 22 address to the U.N. General Assembly, Trump called for the United States to replace the term artificial intelligence with super intelligence, arguing that the word “artificial” makes the technology “sound fake.” Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, echoed the terminology a day later during remarks to the U.N. Security Council.
The White House also used the term this week in describing America.gov, the administration’s new AI-powered portal for federal information and services.
Trump unveiled America.gov on Sept. 29 as a single digital point of entry where users can ask questions about government services in plain language. The platform uses Google’s Gemini and xAI’s Grok and is expected to add transactions such as passport renewal and Medicare enrollment later this year.