{"slug": "the-u-s-census-bureau-and-super-intelligence", "title": "The U.S. Census Bureau and “Super Intelligence”", "summary": "The U.S. Census Bureau's Business Trends and Outlook Survey now asks businesses whether they used \"Super Intelligence or SI (formerly referred to as Artificial Intelligence or AI),\" a wording change made under Executive Order 14434, which Simon Willison said the Bureau had \"fallen foul of.\" The Bureau had already changed the question on November 17, 2025, from AI use in \"producing goods or services\" to AI use in \"any of its business functions,\" and under the broader wording the share of companies with 250+ employees answering yes rose from around 12% in September 2025 to around 30% by February 2026 and around 40% by October 2026, per the October 22, 2026 data release. Willison noted the pre- and post-November 17 answers are not directly comparable, and that the latest XLSX file from the survey's Employment size class dataset contains the Super Intelligence wording rather than the AI wording the Bureau announced on December 3, 2025.", "body_md": "I was reminded today of [AI Adoption Rate Trending Down for Large Companies](https://www.apolloacademy.com/ai-adoption-rate-trending-down-for-large-companies/), a chart produced by Apollo Global Management in September 2025, which appeared to show a slowdown in U.S. corporate AI adoption based on numbers collected by the U.S. Census Bureau. At the time I used that chart [to demonstrate GPT-5 data analysis](https://simonwillison.net/2025/Sep/9/apollo-ai-adoption/), and then [to experiment with Claude's new Code Interpreter](https://simonwillison.net/2025/Sep/9/claude-code-interpreter/#something-much-harder-recreating-the-ai-adoption-chart). I decided to try running those numbers again to see what had changed over the past year, and in doing so learned that the Bureau has fallen foul of [Executive Order 14434](https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/09/inaugurating-the-era-of-super-intelligence/), aka the asinine Super Intelligence one.\n\nEvery two weeks the U.S. Census Bureau runs a survey called the [Business Trends and Outlook Survey](https://www.census.gov/hfp/btos/data) (aka BTOS). Each time it goes to 200,000 businesses out of 1.2 million total - the surveyed group (a \"panel\") cycles such that an individual business only completes the survey every twelve weeks.\n\nThe latest data is published on alternating Thursdays at 10am.\n\nI used the most recent numbers (published October 22, 2026) to create a new version of the AI adoption chart, updated to reflect both the last twelve months and a change that was made to the survey question sent out by the Bureau:\n\nFor comparison, here's that AI adoption chart from last year (my GPT-5 version):\n\nIn September 2025 the largest (250+ employees) companies answered \"yes\" around 12% of the time to the question about whether they used AI in \"producing goods or services\".\n\nUnder the new \"any business function\" wording, by February 2026, those same large companies answered \"yes\" around 30% of the time, and by October 2026 that had increased to around 40%.\n\nThe data in the above chart comes from the \"Employment size class\" XLSX file, [available from here](https://www.census.gov/hfp/btos/data_downloads). Here's [a copy](https://static.simonwillison.net/static/2026/Employment-Size-Class-Nov-1-2026-copy.xlsx) of the file I used.\n\nYou can view [the survey document](https://www.census.gov/hfp/btos/downloads/BTOS%20Content%20V5%20Core%20Round%203,%204.pdf) that is sent out to businesses - here's [my snapshot copy](https://static.simonwillison.net/static/2026/BTOS-Content-V5-Core-Round-3-4.pdf) of that 346KB PDF.\n\nAs the chart demonstrates, the question asked by the Bureau changed in a material way on November 17th, 2025. Prior to that date, the question they asked was this (emphasis mine):\n\nIn the last two weeks, did this business use Artificial Intelligence (AI) in **producing goods or services**? (Examples of AI: machine learning, natural language processing, virtual agents, voice recognition, etc.)\n\nOn December 3rd, 2025, [the Bureau announced](https://www.census.gov/hfp/btos/downloads/AI%20Question%20Wording%20Updates.pdf) a significant change to that question. Here's the replacement:\n\nIn the last two weeks, did this business use Artificial Intelligence (AI) in **any of its business functions**? (Examples of AI: machine learning, natural language processing, virtual agents, voice recognition, etc.)\n\nNo more \"producing goods or services\" - now it's \"in any of its business functions\"! This means that the answers to the question before and after November 17th are not directly comparable.\n\nWhen I went looking for the updated question language in the latest XLSX file, I couldn't find it. I found this instead:\n\nIn the last two weeks, did this business **use Super Intelligence or SI** (formerly referred to as Artificial Intelligence or AI) in any of its business functions? (Examples of SI use include: SI-powered data analysis; generative SI for marketing, product design, or coding; virtual SI agents for customer service; SI-powered forecasting or pricing; SI-driven computer vision for quality control, etc.)\n\nThe [BTOS about page](https://www.census.gov/hfp/btos/about) explains what happened:\n\nBeginning with the October 19, 2026 collection, [instrument wording](https://www.census.gov/hfp/btos/downloads/BTOS%20Content%20V5%20Core%20Round%203,%204.pdf) was updated due to [Executive Order 14434](https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/09/inaugurating-the-era-of-super-intelligence/).\n\nThe current numbers reflect the old Artificial Intelligence survey wording - the first survey results reflecting the Super Intelligence wording are due for publication on Thursday.\n\nThe obvious open question here is whether this wording change is going to affect the survey results.\n\nThe businesses answering this survey will have last seen that question twelve weeks ago, when it was still called AI. Hopefully the new language isn't going to confuse them, especially since the survey helpfully spells out \"formerly referred to as Artificial Intelligence or AI\".\n\nI can't help but laugh at the absurdity of \"SI-powered data analysis; generative SI for marketing, product design, or coding; virtual SI agents for customer service\" though.\n\nTags: [census](https://simonwillison.net/tags/census), [surveys](https://simonwillison.net/tags/surveys), [ai](https://simonwillison.net/tags/ai), [generative-ai](https://simonwillison.net/tags/generative-ai), [llms](https://simonwillison.net/tags/llms)", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-u-s-census-bureau-and-super-intelligence", "canonical_source": "https://simonwillison.net/2026/Nov/2/census-bureau-super-intelligence/", "published_at": "2026-11-02 13:31:26+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-11-02 13:52:38.493130+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-policy", "artificial-intelligence"], "entities": ["U.S. Census Bureau", "Business Trends and Outlook Survey", "Executive Order 14434", "Apollo Global Management", "Simon Willison", "GPT-5", "Claude"], "also_reported_by": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-u-s-census-bureau-and-super-intelligence", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-u-s-census-bureau-and-super-intelligence.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-u-s-census-bureau-and-super-intelligence.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-u-s-census-bureau-and-super-intelligence.jsonld"}}