Trump Executive Order Renaming AI to Super Intelligence

On September 29, 2026, Trump signed Executive Order 14434, 'Inaugurating the Era of Super Intelligence,' directing every executive branch agency to swap 'Artificial Intelligence' and 'AI' for 'Super Intelligence' and 'SI' across official correspondence, websites, reports, and policy documents ^[1][2]. The order explicitly tells agencies to 'no longer acknowledge' the old terminology ^[2]. It doesn't touch previously issued regulations or historical documents - the rewrite only governs future federal output ^[3]. More consequential than the renaming itself: Michael Kratsios, the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, has 60 days - a deadline landing November 28, 2026 - to propose statutory language formally defining 'Super Intelligence' in federal law ^[2][3]. Legal analysts note that however that definition is written, it could reshape federal AI incentives, export controls, and oversight obligations ^[3]. Separately, several tech executives who met Trump at the White House appear to have signed a voluntary two-page accord on frontier-model development that Trump posted on Truth Social; it requires internal controls and external assessments but creates no legally enforceable obligations ^[3]. Asked directly by a reporter whether the order itself was binding, Trump offered a narrower answer than the sweeping language of the EO suggests - 'I think it's morally binding, yeah' - leaving open how, or whether, non-compliance would actually be enforced. He also framed the stakes in explicitly geopolitical terms, telling reporters the renaming was tied to the broader US-China race for advanced AI: 'whoever wins super intelligence, wins.'

Long before Trump's order, 'superintelligence' already had a precise meaning in AI research. Philosopher Nick Bostrom's 1998 work defined it as a hypothetical intellect 'much smarter than the best human brains in practically every field' ^[4]. Cornell historian Ronald Kline makes a similar point about the administration's usage: 'the phrase super intelligence means more than simulating human intelligence, it means going beyond human intelligence' ^[4]. Syracuse professor Baobao Zhang, who studies AI politics, warns that applying the term to today's AI systems could 'complicate efforts to regulate' the technology ^[4]. University of Chicago marketing professor Jean-Pierre Dube offers a branding critique in the same vein: 'if we believe that artificial already encourages fear, super seems like something far more worrisome' ^[5].

Corporate America followed suit. Elon Musk renamed SpaceXAI to SpaceXSI, with the company's X account already reflecting the new name ^[6]. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff announced that AIForce, the company's flagship AI product line, is being rebranded SIForce to align with the new federal terminology ^[6][7]. Both companies made the change shortly after Trump had already declared on Truth Social that the White House 'considers anyone that uses the term, Artificial Intelligence... as opposed to the highly accepted new and more accurate term, Super Intelligence, THE ENEMY!' ^[8]. Notably, the order lands against a backdrop of weak public approval for Trump's AI policy generally - a Quinnipiac poll found just 25% of voters approved of his handling of AI, versus 58% who disapproved ^[9].

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed his own executive order on October 1, 2026, directing state agencies to keep using 'Artificial Intelligence' and 'AI,' explicitly rejecting the federal rebrand ^[10][11]. Newsom's order frames the renaming as a distraction from substantive AI safety regulation that California has been pursuing independently ^[10]. The result is a live federal-state split: contractors and agencies dealing with Washington will need to adopt 'SI' in solicitations and correspondence, while the same companies dealing with Sacramento keep 'AI.'

Reaction outside Washington split sharply along predictable lines. Pro-Trump social media accounts treated Musk's SpaceXSI rename as a sign of patriotic compliance with the President's directive, while Politico used the order as a news hook to surface OpenAI's Sam Altman's reaction to the relabeling from a prior interview. On Reddit, sentiment ran overwhelmingly negative and mocking: commenters across multiple AI and tech-focused communities framed the shift as a vanity project or a loyalty test, with comparisons to Newspeak-style compliance theater, and one thread reported that internal workplace documentation at a government lab was already being updated from 'AI' to 'SI.' A separate, community-circulated data point - not independently verified against the underlying domain registry - claimed a sharp jump in new '.si' domain registrations following the order; it is worth treating as a talking point about public mood rather than a confirmed statistic.