What Trump’s ‘AI ban’ actually changes as government agencies adopt new name
Last month, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to officially rebrand the term artificial intelligence to ‘super intelligence’.
In the order, it stated that the ‘terminology used by the Federal Government should reflect the transformative capabilities of these technologies and the limitless opportunities they create for the American people’.
The president claimed that the use of ‘super’ was ‘much more accurate’ as opposed to artificial.
During a speech at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City, Trump went on to share that ‘from this point forward, all of United States documents, and hopefully the world’s, will be changed’ to use ‘super intelligence’ instead of AI.
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The US leader also said that the government would not be holding the expansion of the technology back, adding: “We’re going to encourage it, not rein it in.”
Trump moves to ban the term ‘artificial intelligence’
Trump has since ordered all government websites to delete the word AI and replace it with ‘Super Intelligence’, and has announced an official plan to ban the term.
Previously taking to his own social media platform, Truth Social, the president claimed that the White House would consider anyone who uses AI instead of SI to be ‘the enemy’.
Since then, Trump posted again yesterday (October 27), writing: “When will The Wall Street Journal start calling Artificial Intelligence (AI), a very bad and inaccurate name, SI (Super Intelligence), the name which virtually everyone else is using, or soon will be.
“In short order, we will be officially BANNING the term, ‘AI/Artificial Intelligence’, in all relevant documents, and everything else, due to its inaccuracy. Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP.”
This call out of The Wall Street Journal appears to come after the outlet published an opinion piece titled ‘Let AI be AI’.
In the article, editor Matthew Hennessey wrote: “It isn’t the substance of super intelligence we find objectionable. It’s the branding. We were happy being called AI. It’s snappy. Aligned. Everybody knows what AI is, even if they’re terrified of it.
“Mr. Trump wants to go with SI instead. This is a huge mistake. The name is already taken! We don’t want to be confused with Sports Illustrated. There’s also this thing called the International System of Units, a scientific measurement deal that goes by its French acronym: SI.
“The first rule of branding is consistency. If we’re going to violate that rule, we should at least abide by the second rule of branding: Know your audience!”
Government agencies now use SI
Despite push back, government agencies are now adopting the new name under orders from the president, which means that any official wording from the US government will refer to the tech as ‘super intelligence’.
The administration has already begun renaming some programs, including the State Department’s American AI Exports Program, while the executive order also calls for proposals on how the new terminology could be defined in law.
Still, it seems fair to say that Trump will have a tough job trying to get people to seriously start saying AI instead of SI, although he has since rebranded Lake Ontario to Lake America, so stranger things have happened!