President Donald Trump scanned pages of a signed executive order titled "Inaugurating the Era of Super Intelligence" to Truth Social on Sept. 29, directing agencies, where law allows, to use "Super Intelligence" and "SI" instead of "Artificial Intelligence" and "AI."
Under the order, agencies "shall use 'Super Intelligence' and 'SI' in place of 'Artificial Intelligence' and 'AI'" in letters, websites, reports and policy documents "to the maximum extent permitted by law."
The plain text of the order — rather than scanned pages — was made available Tuesday on the White House website.
The order's definition section ties the new name back to the old one. It says SI means "the technologies and systems encompassed by the term 'artificial intelligence'" in the U.S. Code. In other words, SI is whatever the law already calls AI. That definition holds "unless and until superseded" by a later presidential action "or by an Act of Congress."
The order also says "nothing in this section requires the alteration of previously issued regulations, Presidential actions, contracts, grants, or other historical documents." Still, the change raises questions around the branding of Trump's AI Force, which was announced 10 days earlier: "I am forming the AI Force, much like I did Space Force," Trump wrote on Sept. 19.
“We've changed the name officially today," Trump told reporters Tuesday.
That day, the White House hosted a launch event for America.gov, a new government website that uses AI to search official government sources for answers to user queries. The event also involved a luncheon with tech executives and the signing of a White House Accord on Super Intelligence, a document that encourages AI companies to implement internal and external monitoring practices to lower the risk of unintended and dangerous behavior by AI agents.
Trump described the accord as “morally binding.” The document misspells United States as “Unites States.”
Because the executive order came the same day that tech leaders signed a document carrying the term, Trump can present the industry as having adopted it. Over the course of the America.gov launch event, tech leaders including Jensen Huang and Elon Musk attempted to use the term instead of AI — sometimes correcting themselves mid-sentence.
The order gives the president's science adviser, Michael Kratsios, 60 days to draft legislation on a federal SI definition, including whether it should "modify, expand upon, or otherwise supersede" the existing AI definition.