Donald Trump took another stab at an AI rebrand on Tuesday, this time vowing to ban the use of the term “artificial intelligence” in “all relevant documents” and “everything else.”
The president’s preferred name is “super intelligence,” something he emphasized when meeting with Elon Musk and other tech executives at the White House last month.
But the use of the term AI goes back decades, and the Trump White House previously referred to it that way, releasing an “AI Action Plan” last year. Polling, though, shows significant concern about the impact of AI, and negative views of data centers.
Trump posted on Truth Social, “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”
Trump signed an executive order on Sept. 29 that directs federal agencies to use the term “super intelligence,” with figures like Nvidia’s Jensen Huang going along with it. But media outlets have continued to use the term “AI,” given the widespread adoption of it that goes back decades.
Although the president’s authority to force public adoption of “super intelligence” is limited, the White House has tried to enforce previous rebrands. It banned the Associated Press from the Oval Office and removed it from the White House pool because the news organization did not change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. The AP sued, and a federal judge ruled that the White House likely was violating the First Amendment. The judge’s decision is on appeal. Steven Spielberg’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence dates to 2001.