The announcement followed a social media poll and came days after 20-plus European countries urged binding AI safety rules, the opposite of Trump’s position.

US President Donald Trump says the United States will replace “artificial intelligence” with “super intelligence” in official government documents, arguing the word “artificial” makes the technology sound fake.

Trump made the announcement on Tuesday during his address to the 81st United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York.

“The use of the word artificial makes intelligence fake. It makes it sound fake, and it is not fake.

It’s actually amazing, but we have to be careful,” he said.

“From this point forward, all of United States documents and hopefully the world’s will be changed to use the much more accurate term, super, as opposed to artificial. In other words, welcome to the new world of super intelligence, SI. Let’s see if that goes. It sounds much better.”

Where the idea came from

The announcement followed a social media poll Trump ran days before the speech, asking followers to choose a new name for AI from “Superior Intelligence,” “Extreme Intelligence” or “Supreme Intelligence,” writing at the time that “many people think that the words ‘Artificial Intelligence’ are inaccurate, and very ineloquent.” He ultimately settled on “Super Intelligence” instead of any of the polled options.

Trump rejects international AI regulation

Beyond the renaming, Trump used the speech to reject calls for global oversight of AI development.

“The United States totally rejects any attempt to construct a globalist scheme to control the artificial intelligence being spoken of so much now,” he said. He said the US would not restrict the technology’s growth, which he described as potentially larger in impact than the Industrial Revolution or the internet. “We will only encourage super intelligence. We’re going to encourage it, not rein it in,” he said.

“The United States leads the world in super intelligence and will continue to do so safely and responsibly.” He added that whichever nation leads in the technology would gain a decisive global advantage. “Whoever wins SI, whoever wins super intelligence, wins.

That’s the group that wins. And we’re leading now over China by a lot and everyone else, and we’re going to keep it that way,” he said.

He said the US government would monitor the technology through the Department of Justice and other law enforcement agencies where necessary.

Trump’s remarks came just days after leaders of more than 20, mostly European, countries called for binding international safety measures on advanced AI, warning that the technology’s development could outpace humanity’s ability to control it, a position directly at odds with Trump’s rejection of regulation.

Trump dismisses AI safety warnings, invokes climate comparison

Trump dismissed growing warnings from AI safety researchers, comparing them to earlier predictions about climate change, which he has previously called a “hoax.”

“Every major new technology brings challenges, and superintelligence is no exception,” he said.

“The very same people who said we’ll all be dead in 12 years because of global warming, a name since reborn to climate change because the planet was cooling, not warming, and nobody was dead… are now saying that AI is going to kill us all, that robots are going to attack us, and that everything is going to be a total disaster.”

Independent climate research, including from US government agencies, confirms that global temperatures are rising due to human activity, contradicting the premise of Trump’s comparison.

His remarks followed a period of heightened concern in the AI industry itself, after a former Anthropic employee’s widely discussed comments warning that humanity faces serious risks without stronger controls on AI development, part of a broader wave of industry warnings that has fuelled renewed debate over regulation.

Reaction to the announcement

The renaming drew sharp reaction online. Journalist Mehdi Hasan wrote that Trump’s decision, based on a social media poll, showed “we live in Idiocracy.”

Commentator Don Winslow called Trump “a SUPER idiot,” while the Republicans Against Trump account on X described the announcement as “beyond parody.”