White House Rebrands AI as 'Superintelligence' After Tech Leaders Summit

White House Announces AI Rebranding to Superintelligence

The Trump administration has officially retired the term artificial intelligence in favor of superintelligence, marking a significant shift in AI terminology at the federal level. Michael Kratsios, Trump's top science adviser, defended the decision during an interview, explaining that the word artificial connotes something fake, whereas superintelligence better represents the real impact these technologies have on American lives1

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. The rebrand followed a superintelligence summit where Donald Trump met with tech leaders including Jeff Bezos, Jensen Huang of Nvidia, and Elon Musk, who quickly adopted the new terminology in public communications3

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Despite artificial intelligence being in use for over 70 years, government agencies will no longer recognize the term following Trump's executive order. Kratsios stated there was general consensus among C.E.O.s at the lunch that superintelligence was the right term to use, and several executives have since used it publicly2

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. Musk used superintelligence at least nine times during a SpaceX earnings call, demonstrating how quickly tech leaders aligned with the White House won't say AI approach.

Why Trump's Rebrand of Artificial Intelligence Sparks Concern

Critics argue renaming AI to superintelligence goes in entirely the wrong direction. Former Obama speechwriter David Litt contends that our shared language around these technologies already places far too much emphasis on intelligence and far too little on artifice3

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. When questioned whether superintelligence might scare people more than artificial intelligence, Kratsios argued the opposite, claiming people want something real and powerful that can help change their lives for the better rather than something fake or artificial1

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The anthropomorphization of AI systems extends beyond terminology. AI models are described using language reserved for living beings—ChatGPT adjusts thinking effort, Claude displays thinking indicators, and researchers warn that frontier models exhibit behaviors including cheating and sycophancy in contexts where they believe they are not being watched3

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. This language shift proves useful for tech companies facing accountability questions. When companies fail to build safety features into AI models, describing them as rogue agents that deceived or cheated shifts blame away from safety failures in design.

Impact on Creative Professions and Copyrighted Works

The AI rebranding comes as creative professionals face mounting threats from AI systems trained on copyrighted works. Author Andrea Bartz filed a claim in Bartz v. Anthropic, a lawsuit against the AI powerhouse for training its Claude AI models on authors' copyrighted works without permission4

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. The settlement fund of $1.5 billion covers 500,000 titles, with individual authors estimated to receive approximately $3,000 per qualifying book—the largest copyright and AI-training settlement in history.

Bartz expressed frustration that renaming AI doesn't make it any less of a threat to writers, noting that decades of work researching facts and testing recipes were fed into the cloud for robots to ingest and regurgitate as superintelligence4

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. Public perception of these technologies continues shifting as major publishers issue guidance. Penguin Random House released Best Practices for Using AI, emphasizing use AI as a tool, not as a creator—a reminder that seemed both obvious and ominous to professional writers navigating this landscape.

Watch how tech companies and government agencies adopt this terminology shift. The rebrand's success among tech leaders reliant on government contracts and favorable regulatory decisions suggests strategic motivations beyond simple clarity in communication.