Trump decides to change the name to artificial intelligence

The President of the United States, Donald Trump, has signed an executive order this Tuesday to replace the term artificial intelligence for superintelligence in federal government official communications. At a time when criticism of the artificial intelligence industry is on the rise in the United States, the decision aims to improve the image of AI.

The order signed by Trump obliges federal departments and agencies to use the term superintelligence and the acronym SI in their correspondence, public communications and policy documents, and instructs them to stop using artificial intelligence and AI. Furthermore, Trump has tasked the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) with establishing an official definition for this new concept and determining what new executive actions would be necessary to implement it.

The executive order comes after Trump received the leaders of the six American technology companies involved in AI development this Tuesday at the White House: Sundar Pichai (Google), Elon Musk (XAI), Dario Amodei (Anthropic), Mark Zuckerberg (Meta), and Jensen Huang (Nvidia). Following the meeting with the top executives of the leading artificial intelligence and technology companies in the United States, Trump signed a voluntary agreement to strengthen AI security through internal controls to monitor the capabilities and behavior of models, risk assessments, and external reviews. The White House has positioned these measures within a strategy to accelerate the use of advanced systems in areas such as scientific research, medicine, energy, and industry.

However, the decision comes six weeks before the legislative elections—held on November 3rd—in which Trump and the Republicans' majority in Congress is at stake. Furthermore, it comes amidst a growing debate over the impact of data centers on communities and the risks of the most advanced AI systems, after the tech companies themselves warned about the need to increase security in the development of artificial intelligence.