President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday directing the federal government to replace the term artificial intelligence with Super Intelligence across the executive branch, following a high-profile White House summit with major technology executives where participants signed a voluntary governance accord.
Across the executive branch, federal offices were ordered on Tuesday by President Donald Trump to swap out artificial intelligence for Super Intelligence through a newly signed executive directive, cementing a terminology drive he had trialed on social media in preceding days. Up until Saturday, when he floated the creation of an AI Force as a successor to the Space Force—the military’s space service branch launched in 2019—the president was still relying on the label AI.
Official correspondence, public communications, websites, reports, policy documents, and other non-statutory materials are mandated by the directive to adopt Super Intelligence and “SI”. Agencies are ordered to no longer acknowledge the traditional terms artificial intelligence and AI, according to the White House. The assistant to the president for science and technology has additionally been tasked by the order with formulating a federal definition for SI and proposing any further executive measures necessary to roll out the updated terminology.
The order follows remarks Trump made at last week’s United Nations General Assembly, where he publicly called for replacing the term artificial intelligence with SI, stating that the use of the word artificial makes intelligence sound fake when it is actually amazing. Whoever wins AI, you have to remember this, and now I say whoever wins SI, whoever wins superintelligence, wins. That's the group that wins,
Trump said at the time. On Monday, ahead of the directive, Trump published polls on X and Truth Social inviting the public to choose a replacement term for AI from options including superior intelligence, extreme intelligence, and supreme intelligence. A subsequent poll released less than an hour later asked voters to pick between super intelligence and superior intelligence, with super securing victory by a razor-thin margin.
The White House Summit and the Super Intelligence Accord
The rebranding order followed a closed-door roundtable at the White House bringing together leading technology executives, including Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei, Jensen Huang of Nvidia, and Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg. During a subsequent press conference, Trump revealed that participants signed a document at the conclusion of the gathering, dubbed the White House Accord on Super Intelligence. Rep. Kat Cammack, R-Fla., discussed the president’s meeting with artificial intelligence leaders at the White House and the signing of the accord on The Bottom Line.
Trump described the agreement as morally binding for the executives who signed it, noting that the tech leaders almost viewed it as a separate kind of constitution. As Anthropic’s eccentric chief executive, Dario Amodei, was tentatively breaking down a newly agreed framework wherein AI companies would regulate themselves despite a series of security breaches, the meeting unfolded. Trump silenced the press corps and signaled for Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg to take over as Amodei stepped back into the rear of the group.
Energy Infrastructure Pressures and the Reindustrialization Debate
Trump reiterated his support for the rapid expansion of data centres, the crucial computing infrastructure that powers AI.
That buildout has sparked significant local pushback. A survey conducted by Marist Poll in partnership with NPR and PBS News earlier this month found that 65% of registered voters opposed data centres being built in their areas due to concerns over electricity usage and their potential impact on communities. Ahead of the November US midterm elections, the construction of data centres has likewise surfaced as a potential political liability for Trump’s Republican party.
Addressing those community apprehensions, Trump told reporters that tech companies would work to make people happy about the construction of data centres, stating that these big, powerful, very rich, very smart companies are going to be making massive contributions to communities. Social media posts from Trump previously declared that communities should only object to data centres if their goal is to remain impoverished and backwards. Jensen Huang of Nvidia said after the meeting that data centres should be called super intelligence factories, adding that these facilities are reindustrialising the United States and creating jobs across the economy.
Federal Definitions and the Broader Lexicon Shift
Similar prior decrees set the precedent for the administration’s rebranding campaign. In an executive order issued in January 2025, federal agencies were instructed to officially designate the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, and just last month Trump ordered Lake Ontario to be designated Lake America, alongside an ongoing battle over adding the president’s name to the Kennedy Center in Washington.
Critics and internet commentators quickly noted various angles on the rebranding, with social media commenters pointing out that China is already developing Super Duper Intelligence, playing off Sports Illustrated with swimsuit issue jokes, or joking about the acronym matching STI. Social media commenters also pointed out that superintelligence, as a single word, is already used to refer to a hypothetical AI model that can outthink and outperform humans.