By Lucretia Hughes
UNITED NATIONS —SSI eligibility for non-citizens, DHS immigration policy, the MELT ICE Act, and today’s biggest trending stories are driving major national conversations—and we’re breaking down the documents, proposals, and competing perspectives you need to see.
Trump said Tuesday that he considers the term artificial intelligence misleading because the word “artificial” can suggest that the technology is fake.
“The use of the word artificial makes intelligence sound fake,” Trump told world leaders. “It is not fake. It’s actually amazing.”
Trump said U.S. documents would instead use the term “super intelligence” and expressed hope that other countries would eventually adopt the terminology.
“Welcome to the new world of super intelligence — SI,” Trump said.
The announcement was more than an exercise in branding.
Trump used the same portion of his U.N. address to stake out the administration’s position in an increasingly consequential international debate over who should regulate advanced artificial intelligence and how much authority international organizations should have over its development.
The president said the United States “totally rejects” attempts to create what he characterized as a globalist system to control the technology.
That position puts the administration at odds with calls from some international leaders for greater cooperation and oversight as AI systems become increasingly powerful.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has called for greater dialogue, transparency and cooperation among governments with advanced AI capabilities, particularly the United States and China. More than 20 countries have also urged binding safety measures for advanced artificial intelligence, according to AFP. The United States and China were not signatories to that effort.
Trump offered a substantially different vision.
Rather than slowing development, the president said the United States intends to encourage the technology while maintaining American leadership.
“We’re going to encourage it, not rein it in,” Trump said, adding that the administration would watch its development closely through the Department of Justice.
The president also said the United States currently leads the world in the technology and intends to maintain that position while developing it “safely and responsibly.”
The terminology change immediately attracted attention because “superintelligence” already has a meaning within the technology industry.
In AI research and public discussion, artificial superintelligence generally refers to a hypothetical system whose intellectual capabilities substantially exceed those of humans across a broad range of tasks. That is different from using “Super Intelligence” as a replacement term for artificial intelligence generally.
Trump, however, presented SI as a new American label for the broader technology.
The president’s announcement also came as world leaders presented sharply different visions of AI’s future at the General Assembly.
The Associated Press reported that discussions at the U.N. ranged from warnings about autonomous weapons and potentially catastrophic AI risks to Trump’s considerably more optimistic emphasis on technological development and American leadership.
Trump’s announcement raises practical questions about how broadly the terminology will be implemented across the federal government.
The president said all U.S. government documents would adopt the new term. Reporting immediately following the speech noted that it was not yet clear whether the change would be implemented through a separate executive order or another formal directive.
The technology itself, of course, does not change because Washington changes its terminology.
Large language models, machine-learning systems, autonomous agents, image generators and other technologies commonly grouped under the AI label will continue operating according to the same underlying systems regardless of whether federal documents call them AI or SI.
But language can influence how emerging technology is understood by the public.
For decades, “artificial intelligence” has been the dominant term used by scientists, universities, technology companies and governments around the world. Replacing that terminology throughout the U.S. government would therefore represent a significant branding shift even if the underlying technology remains unchanged.
There is also a larger policy fight developing behind those two letters.
The United States and China are competing for leadership in advanced computing, semiconductors, data centers and AI development. At the same time, governments are confronting questions involving privacy, employment, intellectual property, cybersecurity, autonomous weapons and the possibility of increasingly capable systems operating with limited human supervision.
Trump’s U.N. message indicated that his administration does not want an international regulatory structure determining how the United States develops that technology.
That debate will continue regardless of what the technology is called.
But if Trump’s terminology takes hold throughout the federal government, Americans may soon begin seeing a different abbreviation in official Washington documents.
AI could become SI.
And behind that seemingly simple change of two letters lies a much larger fight over technological leadership, government regulation and who gets to write the rules for the next generation of intelligent machines.
Original article
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