U.S. President Donald Trump said Thursday that anyone who does not use his preferred term, “superintelligence” or “SI,” would be considered an enemy of the White House, according to Phoenix Technology, which cited Business Insider.
In a post on his social platform, Trump said the White House considers anyone who uses the term “artificial intelligence” or “AI,” rather than what he called the more accurate new term “superintelligence,” to be an enemy. He said the phrase “artificial intelligence” implies the technology is fake.
White House begins terminology shift
The report said the White House has already started changing the name used for artificial intelligence. Trump said that in late September, after meeting industry leaders at the White House, he signed an executive order requiring federal departments and agencies, to the fullest extent permitted by law, to replace “artificial intelligence” and “AI” with “superintelligence” and “SI” in official letters, public communications, websites, and other official communications.
The order does not apply to private companies such as OpenAI, and the White House does not have the legal authority to impose the change on them.
Musk and Altman take different positions
The report also said that SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote on X that he would rename the company’s artificial intelligence unit from SpaceXAI to SpaceXSI. The unit was previously called xAI. In February this year, SpaceX announced the acquisition of Grok developer xAI, and in July renamed the unit to SpaceXAI. As of Thursday afternoon, its X account still showed the name SpaceXAI.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, by contrast, said in an interview on the Politico podcast that there are no plans to rename the company. He added that OpenAI has been discussing superintelligence extensively and will continue to do so.