President Donald Trump simply has no patience for negativity around AI. He says it’s going to be the “Greatest Economic Development Engine in History — Bigger than Oil, Gold, Diamonds, or even the Internet.” But it’s scaring people lately, so apparently he’s decided to just rename it.
Many people think that the words “Artificial Intelligence” are inaccurate, and very ineloquent, relative to AI, or Artificial Intelligence. A far more elegant and accurate description of this new phenomena would be Superior Intelligence (SI) or, Extreme Intelligence (EI) or,…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 19, 2026
The term “artificial intelligence” just isn’t cutting it anymore, so Trump has posted on X that he thinks a more “elegant and accurate description of this new phenomena [sic] would be Superior Intelligence (SI) or, Extreme Intelligence (EI) or, Supreme Intelligence (SI).”
Hey, at least he didn’t go with “America Intelligence.”
Trump wouldn’t be alone in criticizing use of the terms “artificial intelligence” and “AI,” at least when it comes to AI as currently understood. Reliant as they are on language to process information and solve problems, LLMs have been criticized for conflating language use and intelligence. “Yes, an AI system might remix and recycle our knowledge in interesting ways. But that’s all it will be able to do,“ wrote critic Benjamin Riley last year.
It somehow seems unlikely that Trump shares Riley’s concerns.
In a separate X post, he posted a poll about the renaming, graciously handing this momentous task to the people.
VOTE!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 19, 2026
The president didn’t include a “just show me the results” option, so you have to log in and vote to see what’s in the lead. At time of publication, there was still not an overwhelming frontrunner, but “Superior Intelligence” was in the lead with 39.3%. Perhaps soon we will all be talking about Anthropic’s next “Superior Intelligence” model, but—if you’ll forgive me for editorializing—I sort of doubt it.
Trump’s use of AI as a communication tool is an unnerving fact of life now. Over Labor Day weekend, the president went into some kind of fugue state and posted a long string of AI-generated images on Truth Social, including at least one fake image depicting Iran’s Kharg Island being blown up like Alcatraz Island in the movie the Rock. Another, more inscrutable image featured Trump leading some kind of sci-fi killing squad through the streets of a dark dystopia, with the words “THEY WILL NEVER SLEEP AGAIN” at the bottom in red letters. The president posted these troubling AI images about two weeks ago, but life in America has since carried on.
Sarah Matthews, Trump’s former deputy press secretary told the New York Times on September 9 that she was troubled by Trump’s AI posting, saying he, “floods the zone with so much of it that we’ve become numb to just how bizarre it is,” and that, “An 80-year-old president is spending a ridiculous amount of time consuming and reposting endless A.I. fan fiction portraying him as the biggest, strongest and most important person alive. It feels like we’re genuinely watching his brain rot in real time.”
Anyway, don’t forget to make your voice heard by voting for AI’s new name!
