Trump plans executive order renaming AI 'superintelligence' in US government

By Splitfeed EditorialLast updated Sep 29, 2026, 16:50 UTC

On September 29, 2026, President Trump announced he intended to sign an executive order that would rename artificial intelligence "superintelligence" across official United States government documents. The announcement drew immediate attention beyond policy circles when registrants began snapping up domain names ending in ".si", the country-code top-level domain assigned to Slovenia, apparently treating the suffix as shorthand for the new term. The researcher widely described as the "godfather of AI" responded publicly, telling CBC that Trump was "ill-advised" on the matter. The precise scope of the order, including which documents would be affected and when the change would take effect, was not detailed in available reporting.

The episode sits at the intersection of branding, policy and technology in ways that matter beyond the surface oddity. "Superintelligence" is a specific and contested term in AI research, generally used to describe a hypothetical system that exceeds human cognitive ability across all domains. Applying it as a blanket synonym for AI in government documents would represent a significant departure from how the field defines the technology today. That gap between the technical meaning and the proposed official usage is what made the AI godfather's criticism pointed rather than merely rhetorical. It also raises practical questions about how federal agencies, procurement rules and international agreements would handle the terminology shift.

The anti-AI camp has been vocal in framing the move as political theater rather than substantive policy. Accounts including mommabear87.bsky.social and neilofsmeg.bsky.social treated the renaming as an attempt to dress up a complicated and potentially dangerous technology in flattering language, with mommabear87 urging followers to "put the pieces together." Rodimus Digital expressed open contempt for the domain registration rush, calling it carpetbagging driven by "Trump's BS about super intelligence." The pro-AI camp has not yet published reactions to this story, though a camp that typically celebrates AI advancement might be expected to welcome any signal of elevated federal commitment to the field, even if the framing is unconventional. Middle ground voices have also not weighed in yet, but would typically push back on both the dismissiveness of critics and the looseness of the terminology, asking instead what concrete policy or funding changes, if any, would accompany the rebranding.

The argument will sharpen once the executive order is actually signed and its full text is available. The specific definitions written into the order, and whether any agencies issue guidance on implementation, would clarify whether this is a cosmetic change or something with downstream consequences for regulation, procurement and research funding.