President Donald Trump has urged that government and international documents stop using the term "artificial intelligence" (AI) and instead adopt "super intelligence" or the shorthand "super." He made the remark ahead of the United Nations General Assembly and reiterated the idea in a Friday post, saying Chinese leader Xi Jinping "seemed to like" the suggestion.
Trump argued that the word "artificial" makes the technology sound fake: "The use of the word 'artificial' ... makes it sound fake," he said, adding, "it is not fake. It's actually amazing." He proposed that "all United States documents, and hopefully the world's, will be changed to use the much more accurate term 'super' as opposed to artificial."
Why the terminology matters
The proposal has drawn attention because "superintelligence" already carries a distinct meaning in academic and industry discussions. In common usage within those debates, "superintelligence" denotes AI that significantly exceeds human cognitive performance across virtually all relevant domains — a category central to arguments for slowing or banning certain lines of AI development.
Origins and uses of the term
Philosopher Nick Bostrom is widely credited with popularizing the term "superintelligence." In his 2014 book, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, he offered a tentative definition that described it as "any intellect that greatly exceeds the cognitive performance of humans in virtually all domains of interest."
Industry leaders also use the term. Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Meta, has frequently referenced "superintelligence," including in the naming of Meta's AI division.
Industry and researcher concerns
OpenAI said in a 2023 memo that superintelligence "will be the most impactful technology humanity has ever invented," while also warning it "could lead to the disempowerment of humanity or even human extinction."
Jacob Coxon, a former Anthropic researcher whose warnings about AI capabilities have had recent high-profile effects, wrote that OpenAI and Anthropic were "racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives." A petition from the Future of Life Institute calling for a moratorium on superintelligence development has been signed by prominent figures such as Geoffrey Hinton, the Nobel-recognized AI pioneer, and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.
The AI Futures Project, a nonprofit research foundation, proposed delaying superintelligence development until 2040 — a proposal first reported by Axios earlier this year.
Where AI stands now
Views on the current state of AI vary. Greg Brockman, president of OpenAI, has predicted that the company's GPT-6 Astra model could eventually be seen as the arrival of artificial general intelligence (AGI). Like superintelligence, AGI lacks a single universally accepted definition, though some researchers argue the first AGI will already be superhuman on many tasks.
Google DeepMind researchers noted in a report earlier this year that "given that current AI models are already superhuman in many respects (but not yet general enough), the first AGI will already be superhuman on many tasks." This blurs the lines between AGI and superintelligence.
What to watch
The boundaries between AGI and superintelligence remain unsettled. Trump’s suggested relabeling of AI as "super" enters a discourse in which "superintelligence" already has a technical, high‑stakes meaning. Changing established terminology could create confusion in ongoing policy debates about whether to slow, regulate, or halt development of the most advanced systems.
The White House did not immediately respond to Axios' question about whether officials had considered the existing meaning of "superintelligence" when the president proposed the new term.
