Rebrands are, of course, now a White House tradition: Trump has changed names to project US dominance of certain bodies of water (the Gulf of America and Lake America), to signal new institutional priorities (Department of War), or simply to leave his mark on storied places (see the ongoing fight over renaming the Kennedy Center).
The stated reason for this name change is that today’s AI systems “amplify human ingenuity” rather than merely “imitate” intelligence, and the government’s terminology should reflect that. But if this rebrand follows the pattern of others, its effects will extend beyond government.
It will turn a choice of words into a political loyalty test: Those who use the new term demonstrate allegiance to the administration, and those who don’t become marks for attacks (recall that the Trump administration barred the Associated Press from some White House press events after the news outlet did not adopt the term “Gulf of America”).
But most Americans go months without ever pondering what to call the major lake between New York and Canada. AI, on the other hand, is at the center of our national conversation and a technology two-thirds of Americans report interacting with multiple times a week. It might be the boldest rebrand yet.
So one month in, who’s on board?
Let’s start with the government itself. The term “Super Intelligence”—or simply “SI”—now appears more often on government solicitations, like a new request by Immigration and Customs Enforcement for companies to build “SI-powered” surveillance for ICE detention facilities. The new term has been swapped in silently on most government websites. Some, including that of the National Institutes of Health, now include a banner warning visitors they might see both the new and the old terms during the transition period.
There have been hiccups. A day after the rebrand order, the Pentagon announced an ambitious new initiative to study the future of warfare, called Project Meridian; it used the old terminology. A Federal Trade Commission press release last week used “superintelligence” instead of the two-word, capitalized version ordered by the president, and recent press releases from Health and Human Services show no sign of the new language.
The term “AI” will likely stick around given the countless AI-related offices, initiatives, and programs that have sprung up in recent years, like the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office at the Pentagon (the executive order says it doesn’t apply to previously issued regulations or documents).
