Trump gives AI a new name
Donald Trump has a new name for artificial intelligence. He calls it 'super intelligence'. The president announced the change on Tuesday morning, 22 September 2026, from the green marble podium of the UN General Assembly. It was a declaration, not a debate. He claimed the United States was now "officially" renaming the technology. This was not a focused policy announcement. It was a single line dropped into a combative political speech that also took aim at Iran, globalists, and transgender people. The context matters. A technical term was not being updated. It was being conscripted for a political rally held on the world stage, a branding opportunity shoehorned between unrelated grievances.
His justification was simple. Very simple. "The use of the word artificial makes it sound fake," Trump told the assembled diplomats and heads of state in New York. "It's not fake, it's actually amazing." The president's logic dismisses seventy years of scientific convention. It reduces the name of a complex, evolving field of computer science to a gut feeling about a single adjective. The word ‘artificial’ sounded weak to him. It sounded fake. So it had to go. He prefers words that feel powerful and absolute, with 'super' being a recurring favourite in his lexicon for describing anything he approves of. This is not about technology. It is about marketing.
The proclamation was presented as a done deal. An official act. But this "official" renaming currently exists only in the words spoken at the rostrum. No executive order has been signed. No new policy paper has emerged from the White House or the Department of Commerce defining what this change means in practice. It feels less like a shift in governance and much more like a change in slogan, a unilateral attempt to rebrand a transformative technology with a term that fits a political narrative of American strength and exceptionalism. Some people close to the president have reportedly begun using the new phrase. Most observers outside his circle are sceptical. Technology experts say the label is unlikely to catch on. They are probably right. For now, it is just a speech. A new label on an old concept. A word.
The words have a history
Words have meanings. They have histories. The terms ‘artificial intelligence’ and ‘superintelligence’ are not synonyms, and swapping one for the other is not a simple upgrade from a regular product to the premium version. The two phrases come from different worlds. They describe very different things. The president’s declaration ignores this completely.
The phrase ‘artificial intelligence’ was born in a 1956 research proposal for a summer workshop at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, coined by the computer scientist John McCarthy to describe a new, speculative field of study. It was a functional label. McCarthy chose it. He needed an umbrella term for a project exploring the idea that machines could be made to use language, form abstractions and concepts, solve kinds of problems now reserved for humans, and improve themselves. The name was chosen to be broad and neutral, a container for an academic question. It was not a boast. It was a research topic. For seventy years, it has remained the globally accepted scientific term for this discipline.
‘Superintelligence’ is different. It is much more recent. Its popular usage stems not from computer science but from philosophy, specifically the work of thinkers like Oxford’s Nick Bostrom. It refers not to current technology but to a hypothetical future agent possessing an intellect that radically exceeds the cognitive performance of the most gifted humans in virtually all domains. This is not our world. It is a speculative concept, a tool for thinking about the distant future and the profound, perhaps existential, risks that might accompany the creation of a machine mind far greater than our own. The word carries the weight of that philosophical caution. It is a signpost to a possible danger. It is not a description of a chatbot that can write an email.
This history is erased by the rebranding. The distinction is gone. By grabbing this word and applying it to today's technology, Trump is performing a kind of conceptual demolition, taking a term freighted with specific, often cautionary, philosophical meaning and turning it into a blunt instrument of national pride. He has taken the name for a complex academic field and swapped it for the name of a complex philosophical problem. The purpose is not to clarify. It is to create a simple, powerful slogan that recasts American technology as dominant and supreme. The nuances are lost. The history is flattened. All that remains is the word ‘super’.
This is about branding, not technology
This is not a technology policy. It is a communications strategy, a political manoeuvre designed to seize control of a narrative by changing the words used to tell it. The method is familiar. Complex ideas are stripped of their nuance, their history, their subtlety, and then rebranded with simple, emotionally powerful language. The goal is not accuracy. The goal is control.
Donald Trump explained his reasoning at the United Nations. He said the word artificial ‘makes it sound fake’. A better word was needed. ‘It’s not fake, it’s actually amazing’, he told the assembly. This is the logic of a marketer, not a scientist, and it reduces a vast field of inquiry to a single, easily digestible feeling. A feeling of greatness. The word he chose, ‘super’, is not an accident. It is a workhorse of his political vocabulary, a simple superlative used to convey strength, size, and dominance without the need for any supporting detail.
The change is a calculated act of framing. The word ‘artificial’ can suggest a copy, something not quite genuine, an imitation of human thought. It carries a sense of limitation. ‘Super’ does the opposite. It implies superiority. It suggests power beyond the human scale, a leap forward into a new realm of capability. This is a powerful message. It transforms a global scientific project, full of collaboration and shared risks, into a nationalistic competition for supremacy. A race America is winning.
By attempting to rename the field, Trump seeks to own the concept. If his term sticks, every discussion about this technology becomes a subtle reinforcement of his narrative of American strength and technological dominance. The rebranding turns a complex tool into a national trophy. It is a slogan in search of a policy, an attempt to define the terms of debate before the debate has even properly begun. This is about perception. It is not about reality. The entire exercise is designed to shape how people feel about a technology, conveniently sidestepping the much harder work of figuring out what to do with it. The real substance of governance, regulation, and ethics is ignored. The brand is everything.
Will the new name stick?
The new name will fail. Experts agree. Language, especially the precise language of science, is not changed by decree from a podium at the United Nations. It is a living convention, built slowly through consensus and utility, not imposed from the top down. The term 'artificial intelligence' has been the accepted shorthand for seventy years, embedded in millions of academic papers, thousands of company names, and the job titles of an entire generation of engineers since its christening at the Dartmouth workshop in 1956. That history has momentum. This vast body of work constitutes a shared understanding, a technical and cultural foundation that is highly resistant to sudden alteration. A political speech, no matter how forceful, cannot simply erase it.
The resistance will come from everywhere that matters. Consider the technical community. Researchers and programmers value precision above all else, and for them 'superintelligence' already has a specific, philosophical meaning tied to the work of thinkers like Nick Bostrom concerning hypothetical agents with overwhelming cognitive power. Trump’s usage muddles this distinction for political gain. It is marketing, not science. Corporations will also resist. They have spent billions building global brands, products, and research divisions around the internationally recognised letters 'AI'. A company like Google or Microsoft will not rewrite its entire global marketing strategy, retrain its vast sales force, and deliberately confuse its investors just because the American president dislikes the sound of a word on a Tuesday morning. The money says no. It is a commercial and logistical non starter, a pointless and expensive exercise in rebranding for no competitive advantage.
This is a global field. The term's adoption outside of the White House is therefore the true test, and one it is destined to fail. Some people close to the president have reportedly started using his new phrase. That is likely to be the limit of its circulation, an echo inside a political bubble. For a researcher in Beijing, an engineer in Berlin, or a policy maker in Brussels, adopting the American president’s preferred branding would be a political act, an unnecessary concession to a nationalistic narrative of American dominance they have every reason to reject. The language of science strives for neutrality precisely to enable cooperation across borders, a concept alien to the slogan's isolating purpose. It is a phrase for a rally. Not for a laboratory. A dead end.
The real winner is Trump
So who benefits from this semantic game. The real winner is Trump. Of course he is. This is not about clarifying a technical concept for the public, it is about claiming a powerful and poorly understood technology for a political brand. By attaching the prefix 'super', he recasts a field of scientific inquiry as an instrument of national power, a gleaming weapon in a global contest for dominance. It is a simple linguistic trick. It is very effective. The word 'artificial' sounds weak to him, he told the United Nations. He said it sounds 'fake'. 'Super' sounds strong. It sounds American. It sounds like a winner. This allows the administration to frame any American advancement in the field not as a contribution to global knowledge but as a victory for the United States, cementing an image of technological supremacy that plays directly to his political base. It is pure politics. The manoeuvre requires no new investment, no difficult policy choices, and no genuine technological breakthrough, yet it generates the valuable perception of strength and futuristic vision.
The rebrand also performs another vital function for the president. It is a distraction. A useful one. It creates a new, superficial front in the culture war, a meaningless debate over words that consumes media attention and diverts energy from substantive issues. This is its true purpose. While the world discusses the name, the difficult conversations are sidelined. Real policy questions about artificial intelligence are complex, slow, and do not offer easy political victories. How should the government regulate autonomous systems. What is the state’s role in mitigating job losses from automation. How can officials prevent algorithms from perpetuating social biases in policing, finance, and welfare. These are the urgent challenges. They demand serious engagement. A fight over a slogan is infinitely easier. It allows the White House to look like it is leading on a major technological issue while actually avoiding the hard work of governing it, a sleight of hand that replaces policy with posture. The controversy itself is the point.
From speech to policy
A speech is just words. The real test for 'super intelligence' is not whether it is repeated on cable news or by people close to the president, but whether the phrase begins to colonise the formal, bureaucratic language of the American state. That is where rhetoric becomes reality. The things to watch for are not tweets or rally chants. Look for the language in the next executive order on technology policy. Look for its appearance in budget requests from the Department of Commerce or in research grants funded by the National Science Foundation.
This is the true battlefield. The machinery of government runs on precise, established terminology, and displacing a phrase like 'artificial intelligence', which is embedded in decades of legislation, scientific literature, and international agreements, requires a concerted, disciplined effort. It is a slow and difficult process. If the White House can force its new branding into the dense pages of the Federal Register, into procurement documents for the Department of Defence, and into the official papers that define national strategy for decades to come, then the rebrand will have succeeded. It will have become policy. Until then, it is just noise. A slogan in search of a state.
Sources. BBC News Tech: Will Trump's AI rebrand as 'super intelligence' catch on?. BBC News Business: Watch: Trump floats rebranding artificial intelligence as super intelligence. The Verge: Trump says US is officially renaming AI ‘super intelligence’.
Analysis. Drafted with AI assistance from the sources listed above and reviewed by an editor before publication. Jnews links to the organisations it writes about.
