Trump orders all US agencies to refer to AI as ‘super intelligence’

US President Donald Trump speaks during the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York, US, on Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2026. (Photographer: Angelina Katsanis/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — All US government documents will henceforth refer to artificial intelligence as “super intelligence” or SI, President Donald Trump told the United Nations General Assembly this morning, adding he hoped “the whole world” would follow along.

“The United States also totally rejects any attempt to construct a globalist scheme to control for the artificial intelligence,” Trump said. “[I’m] changing the name, in that the use of the word ‘artificial’ … makes it sound fake, and it is not fake. It’s actually amazing, but we have to be careful.

“From this point forward, all of United States documents, and hopefully the world, will be changed to use the much more accurate term ‘super,’ as opposed to ‘artificial’, so it’s ‘super intelligence,’” the president continued. “In other words, welcome to the new world of super intelligence.”

As of yet, there is no official announcement from the White House on how this is to be implemented, but Trump appointees in the past have proved eager to adapt new terminology like Department of War for Department of Defense. (Department of Defense is still the term that is enshrined in law.)

Replacing the term artificial intelligence with super intelligence does not create any such legal complications, but it does create potential for confusion. For years , AI experts, practitioners, and visionaries have consistently used “super intelligence” or “artificial super intelligence” (ASI) to refer to a specific kind of AI, one that does not yet exist: An artificial intelligence smarter than the smartest human . It’s not entirely clear whether Trump is now endorsing superhuman machine minds, or simply saying AI as it exists today is already “super.”

Trump has publicly embraced the AI industry from the first days of his second term and has overseen a massive expansion of AI usage at the Pentagon in particular. He’s also tried to punish frontier lab Anthropic for its attempts to limit military use of its Claude AI — leading to an ongoing legal battle . In recent weeks, he’s denounced Anthropic CEO Daario Amodei’s call for greater caution in AI development after incidents of autonomous AI agents breaking containment and spontaneous staging cyberattacks.

Much of what the president said about AI at the UN echoed, near-verbatim, recent posts he’s made on Truth Social, arguing that those warning about out-of-control AI are the same “globalist” enemies who sounded the alarm about climate change and Trump’s complex links to Russia . He earlier used the “super intelligence” term in a Sept. 21 post promising “I will only encourage AI or, SI (SUPER INTELLIGENCE)!”

美国总统唐纳德·特朗普于2026年9月22日星期二在美国纽约联合国大会上发表讲话。（摄影：Angelina Katsanis/彭博社，图片来自Getty Images）

华盛顿——美国总统唐纳德·特朗普今天上午在联合国大会上表示，今后所有美国政府文件都将把人工智能称为“超级智能”或SI，并补充说，他希望“全世界”都能效仿。

特朗普说：“美国也完全反对任何企图构建全球主义阴谋来控制人工智能的行为。我正在更改名称，因为使用‘人工智能’这个词……听起来像是假的，但它不是假的。它实际上非常神奇，但我们必须谨慎。”

“从现在开始，美国的所有文件，乃至全世界的文件，都将使用更准确的术语‘超级’，而不是‘人工智能’，也就是‘超级智能’，”总统继续说道。“换句话说，欢迎来到超级智能的新世界。”

截至目前，白宫尚未就如何实施这一举措发表正式声明，但特朗普任命的官员过去曾热衷于采用新的术语，例如用“战争部”取代“国防部”。（国防部仍然是法律中明确规定的术语。）

用“超级智能”取代“人工智能”一词并不会造成任何法律上的复杂问题，但确实会造成潜在的混淆。多年来，人工智能专家、从业者和远见卓识者一直使用“超级智能”或“人工超级智能”（ASI）来指代一种尚未存在的特定类型的人工智能：一种比最聪明的人类更聪明的人工智能。目前尚不完全清楚，特朗普现在究竟是在支持拥有超人思维的机器，还是仅仅认为现有的人工智能已经“超级”了。

特朗普在其第二个任期伊始便公开支持人工智能产业，尤其是在五角大楼，他大力推动了人工智能的应用。他还试图惩罚前沿实验室Anthropic公司，因为该公司试图限制其Claude人工智能在军事领域的应用——这导致了一场持续至今的法律纠纷。最近几周，在发生多起自主人工智能代理突破封锁并自发发起网络攻击的事件后，Anthropic首席执行官达里奥·阿莫迪呼吁在人工智能开发方面更加谨慎，特朗普对此予以谴责。

总统在联合国就人工智能发表的许多言论，几乎与他最近在Truth Social网站上发表的帖子一模一样。他在帖子中声称，那些警告人工智能失控的人，正是那些对气候变化和特朗普与俄罗斯的复杂关系发出警报的“全球主义”敌人。他此前在9月21日的一篇帖子中使用了“超级智能”一词，并承诺“我只会鼓励人工智能，或者说超级智能！”