Will Trump's AI rebrand as 'super intelligence' catch on?

Donald Trump has decided that AI sounds too fake. Speaking at the UN General Assembly in New York on Tuesday, he said the technology should be called “super intelligence” instead, and told the room, “Welcome to the new world of super intelligence - SI.” He later said US documents, and “hopefully the world’s,” should move to the new term.

It was not a one-off line. Over the past week, Trump ran polls on Truth Social with options including superior intelligence, extreme intelligence and supreme intelligence. “Super intelligence” won. Some people around him have already picked it up, which is usually how these things start: with loyalists, then a few headlines, then a lot of eye-rolling.

But there is a problem with the pitch. In tech circles, super intelligence does not mean AI in general. It usually refers to a much more advanced system, one that could exceed humans in every kind of thinking. The term has long been tied to Nick Bostrom, who described it more than a decade ago as an “intellect” superior to humans in all forms. It is still hypothetical.

That is why experts told the BBC the new label is unlikely to spread. Simon Coghlan, a digital ethics lecturer at the University of Melbourne, called it misleading and said it exaggerates what current AI can do. Ben Leong, a computer science lecturer at the National University of Singapore, said professionals would probably want to keep “SI” for a higher level of AI, not for today’s systems. Trump’s circle may try to make the switch, but the industry has its own vocabulary, and it is not usually in a hurry to adopt political branding.