AI Is Now "Super Intelligence": What the SI Rename Actually Means

On Tuesday, September 22, 2026, standing at the podium of the United Nations General Assembly, President Trump announced that the United States is done with the word "artificial."

From now on, he said, the technology the whole world has spent three years arguing about will be called super intelligence. Or, for short, SI.

It is easy to laugh at a rename. It is harder to ignore one that is written into every federal document of the largest buyer of technology on earth. So let's take it seriously for a few minutes: what was actually said, where the word comes from, what really changes, and what it means for anyone who builds with this stuff.

Same technology, new name. Photo by Luke Jones on Unsplash

The short version

• What happened: In his UNGA address, Trump said AI will be renamed "super intelligence" in all U.S. documents, and he hopes the rest of the world follows.
• The abbreviation: SI. He said it himself: "welcome to the new world of super intelligence — SI."
• The reason he gave: "The use of the word artificial makes intelligence sound fake."
• What did not change: the technology. The models, the chips, the companies and the capabilities are exactly what they were on Monday.
• What will change: the vocabulary of government. That means procurement language, agency reports, grant programs and eventually a lot of search traffic.

What he actually said

Here is the passage, as reported by The Hill:

"The United States also totally rejects any attempt to construct a globality scheme to control for the artificial intelligence being spoken of so much now, hereinafter called super intelligence. Changing the name."

"The use of the word artificial makes intelligence sound fake. It is not fake. It's actually amazing. But we have to be careful. In fact, it is exactly the opposite of what it purports."

"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."

"In other words, welcome to the new world of super intelligence — SI. Let's see if that goes. It sounds much better. It is much better, and it's much more accurate."

Two things in there are easy to miss.

First, the rename came inside a sentence about regulation. The same breath that introduced "super intelligence" rejected international oversight of it. AFP's report quotes him calling global supervision proposals a "globalist scheme" to control the technology. The name and the policy arrived together.

Second, he said "we have to be careful." That line got far less airtime than the rename, but it matters. The official framing is not "this is harmless." It is "this is real, it is powerful, and it is ours."

Wait, isn't "superintelligence" already a thing?

Yes. And this is where the rename gets interesting.

"Artificial intelligence" was coined in August 1955 by John McCarthy and his co-authors in the proposal for the Dartmouth Summer Research Project. For seventy years it has been the umbrella term for the whole field, from chess programs to chatbots.

"Superintelligence" has a much narrower and much heavier meaning. The idea goes back to I. J. Good's 1965 essay on an "ultraintelligent machine." Philosopher Nick Bostrom gave it the definition most people cite today, in his 2014 book Superintelligence:

"Any intellect that greatly exceeds the cognitive performance of humans in virtually all domains of interest."

In other words, in the research world "superintelligence" is not a synonym for AI. It is the name for the destination: the thing that comes after human-level AI. It is what several frontier labs say they are building toward, and it is exactly what AI safety researchers are most worried about. The Hill noted this directly: super intelligence is "both the ultimate goal of many frontier AI firms and the greatest worry among those warning about its threat to humanity."

So the rename does something a little strange. It takes the word for the finish line and applies it to the whole race.

Words shape budgets. Photo by Waldemar Brandt on Unsplash

"Super intelligence" vs "superintelligence": does the spelling matter?

A little. The President's phrase, as quoted in the press, is two words: super intelligence. The academic term is one word: superintelligence. Expect both to show up everywhere for a while, along with "SI" on its own.

If you are writing about it, searching for it, or buying domains around it, treat all three as the same topic. If you are reading a government document, "super intelligence" now simply means what "artificial intelligence" meant last week.

Why rename it at all?

Take the stated reason at face value: "artificial" sounds fake, and the technology is not fake.

There is a real argument buried in there. "Artificial" has always carried a whiff of imitation: artificial sweetener, artificial flowers. Plenty of researchers have complained for decades that the name undersells a field that now writes code, reads X-rays and runs scientific experiments. A name that sounds like a knockoff shapes how people think about something.

There is also a political pattern. The rename is one of a series. AFP points out that the administration changed the Gulf of Mexico to the "Gulf of America" by executive order last year, and in August renamed Lake Ontario "Lake America" amid a trade dispute with Canada. Names are how this White House plants flags.

And there is the geopolitical backdrop. The speech came days before Chinese President Xi Jinping's state visit to Washington, and as more than 20 mostly European countries pushed for binding safety rules on advanced AI, which neither the U.S. nor China endorsed. Calling the technology "super" rather than "artificial" signals ambition, and it signals that the U.S. sees this as a race it intends to lead.

What actually changes

Here is the practical part, from least to most important.

1. Nothing about the technology

Your chatbot did not get smarter overnight. GPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, Llama and the rest are the same models they were yesterday. A rename is a label, not a capability.

2. Government vocabulary

"All of United States documents" is a sweeping phrase. As agencies implement it, expect "super intelligence" and "SI" to appear in reports, strategies, press releases and eventually requests for proposals. If you sell to government, the words your buyers search for are about to shift.

3. The public conversation

When the President names something from the UN podium, a lot of people start using the new name, and a lot of people start using it ironically. Either way, usage goes up. "What is super intelligence?" is about to be one of the most-asked questions on the internet.

4. The safety debate gets harder to have

This is the part worth thinking about. If "super intelligence" now means all AI, what do we call the thing that researchers meant by superintelligence, the one that exceeds humans at almost everything? The rename blurs a distinction that the whole safety conversation depends on. Expect researchers to reach for other terms, like "artificial superintelligence" (ASI) or "frontier systems," to keep the line clear.

It also lands at a moment of real public nerves. A Reuters/Ipsos poll released the same day, reported by The Hill, found 73 percent of Americans don't believe AI companies have done enough to prevent serious harm. You can rename the technology. You can't rename that feeling.

What this means if you build with AI

Here is our honest take, as people who build AI agents for a living.

The name matters less than what you wrap around it. Call it artificial, call it super, call it SI: a model on its own is a brilliant, forgetful, unaccountable text engine. It does not remember last week. It can't press a button unless something gives it hands. Nothing checks its work unless someone builds the checking.

The more powerful the model, the more that surrounding layer matters. A bigger engine needs better brakes, a better steering column and a dashboard that tells you what it is doing. In agent engineering that surrounding layer has a name: the harness.

That is what we build at AGNT. It is a local-first system where agents use real tools, keep memory, work under human approval when it matters, and leave an execution receipt for every action. It works with whichever model you prefer. We wrote two follow-ups on exactly this idea:

• Super Intelligence Needs a Harness: why the rename makes the control layer the most important part of the stack.
• Model vs. Harness: Where Super Intelligence Actually Does Work: a plain-language breakdown of what the model does, what the harness does, and why the difference decides whether AI ships real work or just talks about it.

Power is only useful when it's pointed somewhere. Photo by hao wang on Unsplash

Frequently asked questions

Did Trump officially rename artificial intelligence?

He announced it in his address to the United Nations General Assembly on September 22, 2026, saying AI will be called "super intelligence" in all U.S. government documents. How each agency puts that into practice will become clearer in the coming weeks.

What does SI stand for?

SI stands for super intelligence, the President's new term for what was called artificial intelligence (AI). He used the abbreviation himself in the speech.

Is super intelligence the same as artificial intelligence?

In the new U.S. government usage, yes: "super intelligence" replaces "artificial intelligence" as the name for the technology. In academic usage, "superintelligence" has long meant something narrower: a future system that greatly exceeds human abilities in virtually every domain, following Nick Bostrom's 2014 definition.

Why did Trump rename AI?

He said the word "artificial" makes intelligence sound fake and that "super" is "much more accurate." The rename came in the same passage where he rejected international efforts to regulate the technology.

Is super intelligence the same as AGI?

No. AGI, artificial general intelligence, usually means AI that matches human ability across most tasks. Superintelligence traditionally means AI that goes well beyond human ability. The new government term uses "super intelligence" for today's AI as a whole, so context matters when you read it.

Does the rename change how AI works?

No. The models, their abilities and their limits are the same. What changes is the language used by government and, likely, by a lot of the public.

Do other countries have to use the new name?

No. Trump said he hopes "the world's" documents will change too, but other governments set their own terminology. Watch how the term travels after the Trump–Xi summit and the UN Security Council session on AI this week.

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