US President Donald Trump has ordered the federal government to call artificial intelligence “Super Intelligence,” while keeping the technology’s legal definition unchanged and relying on industry to set the rules for its use.
In an executive order, the White House administration said modern systems “far exceed what was envisioned when the term ‘Artificial Intelligence’ first came into use,” adding they “increasingly represent not merely artificial intelligence, but a new era of Super Intelligence.”
“It is therefore the policy of my Administration that, to the maximum extent permitted by law, the executive branch shall use the terms ‘Super Intelligence’ and ‘SI’ in place of ‘Artificial Intelligence’ and ‘AI’,” Trump ordered.
The executive branch “will not acknowledge” the older terms in any applicable setting, the order stated.
Yet the order defines the new term using the old one. Section 3 of the order says Super Intelligence means the technologies and systems covered by the statutory definition of artificial intelligence in 15 U.S.C. 9401(3).
That equivalence may not last. The order gives the White House 60 days to propose a new legal definition.
Trump also put the new name to use immediately. On the same day, he and the leaders of six technology companies signed the “White House Accord on Super Intelligence,” a voluntary set of safety commitments for frontier models, which Trump posted on Truth Social.
The accord, subtitled “Joint Commitment on Frontier Responsibilities,” carries the signatures of Sundar Pichai of Google, Dario Amodei of Anthropic, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, Greg Brockman of OpenAI, Elon Musk of xAI and Jensen Huang of Nvidia, alongside Trump’s. Microsoft and Amazon, two of the seven companies that made voluntary AI commitments to the Biden White House according to a July 2023 White House fact sheet, do not appear on the new accord.
Companies that train and deploy frontier models need “robust internal processes and controls” to ensure their technology behaves as intended, the signatories wrote in the accord.
The document sets out four layers of controls and audits. The first is internal monitoring of model capabilities and alignment in areas including cybersecurity, biosecurity and chemical threats. The other three are an internal team to verify those controls, an independent external auditor or evaluator, and an independent committee of the board of directors to oversee the process.
The accord does not name auditors, set deadlines or require companies to disclose audit findings to customers or regulators.
The signatories said they “believe each company should implement” the four layers. Codifying the steps into laws or regulations “may make sense” over time, they added.
The accord refers to “frontier models” in its commitments, with only its title adopting the term “Super Intelligence” mandated by the new order.
The Executive Order on Super Intelligence directs the White House’s top science and technology adviser to propose legislation for a new federal definition within 60 days, putting the deadline at November 28.
The new definition must reflect the capabilities of frontier systems, which Trump described in the order as doing “much more than imitate or automate discrete aspects of human intelligence.”
The proposal must assess whether the new definition should modify, expand upon or supersede the statutory definition of artificial intelligence, the order said. It must also propose amendments to existing laws that reference AI.
Until then, the current definition applies unless superseded by presidential action or an Act of Congress, according to the order. Changing the statutory definition itself would require Congress, the order added.
For now, the rename covers official correspondence, websites, reports, policy documents and other non-statutory documents, the order stated. Previously issued regulations, contracts and grants do not need to be altered, it added. The order does not address vendor proposals, solicitation responses or product documentation that use the older terms.
This article first appeared on CIO.