President Donald Trump wants the world to stop calling it artificial intelligence. In a speech at the United Nations on Tuesday, he said the United States government will now use the term super intelligence, because he believes the word artificial makes the technology sound fake.
Trump’s super intelligence announcement came during his address to the 81st session of the UN General Assembly in New York on Sept 22, 2026. Within hours, the State Department started putting the change into practice, ordering diplomats to replace AI with SI in official documents, remarks and press materials. For readers new to the topic, here is how artificial intelligence actually works.
Trump told world leaders that he would officially change the name of AI. He argued that the current name undersells a technology that is reshaping the world.
“The use of the word artificial makes intelligence fake, it makes it sound fake and it is not fake. It’s actually amazing,” Trump said, according to The Associated Press.
He added that American government documents will from that point onward use “the much more accurate term super as opposed to artificial. So it is super intelligence.”
Diplomats Ordered to Switch to SI
The rebrand moved from speech to policy the same day. Michael Drager, deputy assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of International Organization Affairs, sent an email to staff on Tuesday with the subject line “Change in Nomenclature AI to SI.”
“Following the president’s remarks at the GA today, please change all references of ‘Artificial Intelligence’ to ‘Super Intelligence’ in our documents and positions. We will be using ‘SI’ in all remarks, positions and press elements moving forward,” the email said.
The Associated Press obtained the email on Wednesday. The bureau oversees American diplomatic missions to the UN and other multilateral agencies around the world.
It remains unclear whether other State Department bureaus or federal agencies will adopt the new term. The order could also force a name change for the “AI Force” that Trump announced this past weekend, turning it into the “SI Force.”
American representatives already used the SI term on Wednesday during a UN Security Council meeting on AI, where technology executives urged the council to set global guardrails for the fast moving technology.
The new label may create confusion, because the AI industry already uses the word superintelligence with a very different meaning. In the industry, superintelligence describes a future form of AI that surpasses human intelligence across every field. Read more about what superintelligence means in the AI industry.
Trump’s version applies the word to all AI that exists today, from chatbots and voice assistants to advanced research systems. This sets up a direct clash between superintelligence as researchers define it and super intelligence as the White House now wants diplomats to say it.
Experts note that a new name does not change what the technology is or how it works, but names do shape how the public perceives it. “Artificial” in the original term never meant fake. Researchers chose it in the 1950s to describe machine made intelligence, as opposed to the natural intelligence of humans and animals. For background, see the basics of artificial intelligence.
Whether “super intelligence” catches on outside the American government remains an open question.
The push to rename AI comes as Trump frames the technology as a contest the United States must win. He has rejected calls to slow AI development through stronger government oversight, arguing that regulation would hold American industry back while China pushes ahead.
On Monday, Trump claimed on social media that the United States is leading China on AI and said he was “not going to stifle Growth, of something that will be bigger than the Industrial Revolution, or the Internet, itself.”
AI is expected to be a key topic when Trump welcomes Chinese leader Xi Jinping to Washington for a visit starting Wednesday.
The technology’s rapid rise has also brought warnings. AI company CEOs, lawmakers and researchers have cautioned that AI is advancing faster than humanity’s ability to control it, and they have called for international guardrails. These concerns range from safety to growing AI security risks. At Wednesday’s Security Council session, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei addressed the council remotely as executives pressed for action.
Three questions will decide how far this rebrand goes. First, will other parts of the State Department and the wider federal government adopt SI, or will the change stay limited to one bureau? Second, will the American public, the media and the global tech industry follow a renaming led by the government, or keep saying AI? Third, will the “SI Force” become the official name of Trump’s newly announced initiative?
Government rebrands rarely rename a global technology on their own. For now, official American diplomacy will speak of SI while the rest of the world keeps saying AI. The gap between the two will be worth watching in the months ahead.
