Trump tells UN that AI will now be called ‘super intelligence’

President Donald Trump told the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday that US government documents would replace "artificial intelligence" with "super intelligence," calling the existing term misleading and pledging to accelerate rather than restrain the technology's development.

"From this point forward, all of United States documents, and hopefully the world's, will be changed to use the much more accurate term 'super' as opposed to 'artificial.' So it's super intelligence," Trump said during the speech in New York. He added: "In other words, welcome to the new world of superintelligence — SI. Let's see if that goes. It sounds much better".reuters+2

The rebranding follows a weekend in which Trump floated several alternatives — "Superior Intelligence," "Extreme Intelligence," and "Supreme Intelligence" — in polls on Truth Social and X before settling on "super intelligence".gizmodo

Dismissing Risks, Framing a Race

Trump rejected what he called a "globalist scheme to control AI" and dismissed warnings about the technology's dangers as comparable to past alarmism over climate change. "I'm not going to stifle the growth of something that will be bigger than the Industrial Revolution," he said, adding that the Department of Justice would serve as the primary oversight mechanism.economictimes+3

He framed the technology in starkly competitive terms. "Whoever wins AI, whoever wins SI, whoever wins super intelligence, wins," Trump said, claiming the United States is "leading now over China by a lot". The remarks came days after he announced plans to create an "AI Force" and appoint an "AI czar".indiatoday+3

Industry Backdrop

The speech arrives amid an unusual moment of consensus among AI industry leaders. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for a slowdown on September 12, with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Elon Musk publicly agreeing. Amodei has warned Congress about risks including biological weapons proliferation and autonomous cyberattacks, and has proposed granting independent auditors permanent access to AI systems.independentaustralia+2

Trump has pushed back against those calls nearly every day since, branding advocates of caution as "negative forces" and "disgusting conspiracy theorists". Behind the scenes, however, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has been negotiating a US-China AI communication hotline with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng, modeled on Cold War-era channels, ahead of a planned summit with President Xi Jinping.investing+2