White House orders federal agencies to replace ‘Artificial Intelligence’ with ‘Super Intelligence’

President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order directing the executive branch to replace “Artificial Intelligence” and “AI” with “Super Intelligence” and “SI” across a wide range of federal communications, making official a terminology shift the administration had already begun using in speeches and diplomatic materials.

In practical terms, the order tells agencies to update official correspondence, public communications, websites, reports, policy documents and other nonstatutory materials. But it stops short of rewriting U.S. law. The order explicitly says it does not require changes to previously issued regulations, prior presidential actions, contracts, grants or historical documents, and says implementation must be consistent with applicable law and available appropriations.

The White House posted the order, titled “Inaugurating The Era Of Super Intelligence,” on its executive orders page. Signed “DONALD J. TRUMP,” it states: “It is therefore the policy of my Administration that, to the maximum extent permitted by law, the executive branch shall use the terms ‘Super Intelligence’ and ‘SI’ in place of ‘Artificial Intelligence’ and ‘AI’ and will not acknowledge the usage of ‘Artificial Intelligence’ and ‘AI’ in any applicable setting.”

Legally, the order functions mainly as a governmentwide nomenclature change, not a new definition of the technology itself. It does not amend statutes passed by Congress. Instead, it adopts the existing federal statutory definition of artificial intelligence in 15 U.S.C. Section 9401(3), which defines AI as a machine-based system that, for a given set of human-defined objectives, can make predictions, recommendations or decisions influencing real or virtual environments.

The order makes that point directly, saying that, unless the law provides otherwise, “Super Intelligence” and “SI” mean the same technologies already covered by the statutory definition of artificial intelligence. In other words, the administration changed the label, not the federal government’s underlying technical scope.

Trump also directed the assistant to the president for science and technology to submit proposed legislative language within 60 days — roughly by Nov. 28 — to establish a federal definition of “Super Intelligence.” The review is also supposed to assess whether and how to modify 15 U.S.C. Section 9401(3), recommend conforming statutory amendments and suggest any additional executive action.

Tuesday’s order formalized a shift that had already been unfolding across the administration. On Sept. 22, Trump said at the United Nations General Assembly that the United States would refer to AI as “Super Intelligence,” according to contemporaneous reporting. On Sept. 25, a White House fact sheet on Chinese President Xi Jinping’s state visit said the United States and China had agreed to use the term “super intelligence” and had established a U.S.-China Super Intelligence Dialogue.

The change had also filtered into agency guidance. The Associated Press reported that the State Department’s Bureau of International Organization Affairs circulated an internal email telling staff to replace “Artificial Intelligence” with “Super Intelligence” in documents, remarks and press materials. According to the AP, the email said: “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 terminology choice is notable beyond the paperwork because “superintelligence” already carries a distinct meaning in AI safety and policy debates. In that literature, the term commonly refers to systems that greatly exceed human cognitive performance across domains. By applying it to the government’s broad, existing definition of AI, the administration has created a renaming exercise with clear bureaucratic limits — and a meaning that will likely attract attention well beyond federal style guides.