Trump Rebrands AI as 'SI' in 2026 UN Speech: 2 Letters Upend AI Policy
President Trump's UNGA announcement that US documents will replace "artificial intelligence" with "super intelligence" (SI) creates immediate definitional friction for AI researchers, regulators, and standards bodies. The move conflates current machine learning systems with the long-standing technical concept of superintelligence. AI practitioners should track how agencies, labs, and platforms respond before updating internal taxonomies.
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AI briefing
Key takeaways
- President Trump's UNGA announcement that US documents will replace "artificial intelligence" with "super intelligence" (SI) creates immediate definitional friction for AI researchers, regulators, and standards bodies.
- The move conflates current machine learning systems with the long-standing technical concept of superintelligence.
- AI practitioners should track how agencies, labs, and platforms respond before updating internal taxonomies.
- The Verge
- en.tempo.co
In this briefing
Mentioned
Key Intelligence
Key Facts
- 1On September 22, 2026, President Trump told the UN General Assembly that the US is officially renaming artificial intelligence to "super intelligence," introducing the abbreviation "SI."
- 2Trump ordered that "from this point forward, all of the United States documents, and hopefully the world's, will be changed" to use "super" as opposed to "artificial."
- 3Trump claimed the word artificial "makes intelligence sound fake," adding: "It is not fake. It's actually amazing. But we have to be careful."
- 4Trump acknowledged his authority was untested, saying: "Let's see if I have any power. Maybe I do, and maybe I don't, we're gonna find out pretty soon."
- 5The move adds to previous Trump renaming actions, including the Gulf of Mexico, Lake Superior, the Kennedy Center, and Denali, with US digital maps changing labels.
- 6"Superintelligence" already describes a hypothetical AI that surpasses human intellectual capabilities, a term widely used in AI safety and capability research.
The use of the word artificial makes intelligence sound fake. It is not fake. It's actually amazing. But we have to be careful.
During UN General Assembly address on September 22, 2026
Analysis
For the AI community, "superintelligence" is not a branding choice but a specific technical threshold—a system that surpasses human intelligence across all domains. Trump's September 22 UN proposal to replace "AI" with "SI" in all US government documents directly collides with that definition, threatening to muddy research discourse, safety policy, and regulatory language. The practical question for practitioners and model developers is how quickly standards bodies, agencies, and major platforms align with the new term.
On September 22, 2026, during a morning address to the United Nations General Assembly, President Donald Trump announced that the United States is officially renaming artificial intelligence to "super intelligence," introducing the abbreviation "SI." The Verge and Tempo.co both reported the remarks, which surfaced in the middle of a wide-ranging speech touching on Iran, what Trump called "globalists," climate change, and transgender people. Trump argued that the word "artificial" makes intelligence sound fake, said that from this point forward all US documents would use the "much more accurate term super as opposed to artificial," and added, "welcome to the new world of super intelligence—SI." He also visibly hedged on whether the change would stick, saying, "Let's see if I have any power. Maybe I do, and maybe I don't, we're gonna find out pretty soon."
The announcement is more than a semantic quirk because "superintelligence" already occupies a specific place in AI discourse. Researchers, safety advocates, and frontier labs use the term to describe a hypothetical system that surpasses human intellectual performance across all domains, distinct from the machine learning systems deployed today. Trump's directive would splice that future-oriented term into routine federal documents that govern procurement, research funding, standards, and risk management. The result is immediate definitional collision: an agency instructed to assess "SI" could be reading it as either a narrow generative model or an epoch-defining intelligence threshold. Tempo.co's report explicitly notes the existing technical meaning, underscoring that this is not an unused phrase waiting for a rebrand.
The practical implications depend on how far Trump's power extends. No executive order or statute appears in either source, and the speech's own language—"let's see if I have any power"—frames it as an experiment in presidential authority. Trump has precedent for renaming landmarks: the Gulf of Mexico, Lake Superior, the Kennedy Center, and Denali, with digital map providers quickly adjusting labels for US users. That suggests a plausible path where federal style guides, agency websites, and private platforms that rely on government terminology adopt "SI" even without a formal legal directive. But for machine learning practitioners and AI policy analysts, the bigger question is whether regulators will reinterpret existing AI-focused obligations under a new label. If "AI" disappears from documents without corresponding updates to definitions in laws, licensing requirements, and export controls, the change could introduce legal ambiguity rather than clarity.
There is also an international dimension. Trump chose the UN General Assembly to call for the world to follow the US in "hopefully" changing its documents, making terminology part of diplomatic signaling. Tempo.co noted that AI was expected to feature prominently in this week's diplomatic discussions, including with Chinese President Xi Jinping. If Washington shifts its vocabulary unilaterally, joint statements, standards bodies, and multilateral AI governance efforts could face a fork: retain the agreed "artificial intelligence" language or accommodate a US-specific "SI." That would not only complicate interoperability but could also give competitors an opportunity to define the governing lexicon while US agencies manage internal rebranding. Trump's stated goal is deregulation and maintaining US advantage, but a terminology detour may consume bandwidth better spent on compute, talent, and energy infrastructure.
What to Watch
For AI researchers, the emotional framing matters too. Trump's assertion that "artificial" makes intelligence sound fake, and that the technology is "not fake" but "actually amazing," points to a deliberate effort to boost public confidence and perhaps reduce regulatory caution. It cuts against the use of "superintelligence" as a risk-laden concept in AI safety, where it is often invoked as a source of concern. Adopting "SI" across government could soften the perceived distance between today's systems and hypothetical future capabilities, creating inflated expectations among the public and policymakers. Conversely, it may intensify fear among those who associate "superintelligence" with scenarios of loss of control. Either way, the change is likely to distort the careful vocabulary that safety researchers have developed to distinguish narrow AI, AGI, and ASI.
As of publication, the most important signal is whether the White House issues official nomenclature guidance and whether major federal agencies—the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the General Services Administration, and defense procurement offices—translate the speech into updated references. Tech companies with large public-sector contracts may need to watch for change orders in documentation and model cards. Researchers should expect a brief wave of editorial confusion in preprints and grant applications as terminology settles. If the president cannot enforce the change, the incident may remain a rhetorical marker in a speech; if he can, it will become a case study in how language can shape AI policy before any law is passed.
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"Trump Rebrands AI as 'SI' in 2026 UN Speech: 2 Letters Upend AI Policy." AI Intelligence Brief, September 22, 2026. https://getaibrief.com/story/trump-renames-ai-super-intelligence-2026-unga
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