Trump wants AI renamed ‘super intelligence’ — and calls holdouts ‘the enemy’

US President Donald Trump said anyone who continues to use the term ‘artificial intelligence’ instead of ‘super intelligence’ would be treated as ‘THE ENEMY’. — AFP pic

First Published: Friday, 09 Oct 2026 1:27 PM MYT

WASHINGTON, Oct 9 — US President Donald Trump, who has said he wants the term “super intelligence” to replace artificial intelligence, said yesterday that anyone who does not heed his wishes will be treated as “THE ENEMY,” without saying what the consequences would be.

“The White House considers anyone that uses the term, ‘Artificial Intelligence,’ as opposed to the highly accepted new and more accurate term, ‘Super Intelligence,’ THE ENEMY!” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social network.

Trump mentioned his proposed name change in a speech before the UN General Assembly last month, saying his new term “sounds much better.”

Then in late September, Trump signed an executive order, imposing the use of “super intelligence” across the US government.

That same obligation does not affect the private sector, but some there are already adopting it, including Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta group.

Trump ally Elon Musk is using “super intelligence” in his posts on his X network.

The semantic debate is primarily a political one: the US president, who has stridently defended the use of AI, is trying to put a positive spin on it in the face of mounting worries about AI security, and anger over the proliferation of data centers in the US.

More generally, Trump is a fan of renaming things or creating nicknames: he now calls the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America” and converted Lake Ontario into “Lake America.” — AFP