By Rajwa Quasim
President Donald Trump has signed an executive order directing federal agencies to use the term “Super Intelligence” (SI) instead of “artificial intelligence” (AI) in official communications and other non-statutory documents. The move came after Trump met with top technology executives at the White House, where industry leaders also signed a voluntary agreement on AI safety.
The order states, “The Order directs all departments and agencies to use the terms ‘Super Intelligence’ and ‘SI’ in official correspondence, public communications, policy documents, and non-statutory documents within the executive branch and to no longer acknowledge the terms ‘Artificial Intelligence’ or ‘AI.’”
The White House said the capabilities of modern frontier systems have moved beyond what was initially envisioned when the term “artificial intelligence” was coined. The order says these systems increasingly amplify human ingenuity and enable new forms of creativity across science, medicine and other fields.
The order also directs the assistant to the president for science and technology to submit proposed legislative language establishing a federal definition of “Super Intelligence” and “SI” within 60 days. Until then, the order uses the existing statutory definition of artificial intelligence for purposes of its implementation.
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Trump had also expressed his preference for the term “Super Intelligence” during his address to the United Nations General Assembly last week.
Separately, major technology and AI companies signed the “Joint Commitment on Frontier Responsibilities” following the White House luncheon. The voluntary agreement calls for companies developing frontier models to establish four layers of internal controls and independent reviews aimed at ensuring their systems behave as intended and do not access technical systems in unintended ways.
Executives who signed the agreement included Elon Musk of SpaceX, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, Jensen Huang of Nvidia, Greg Brockman of OpenAI and Dario Amodei of Anthropic. The agreement does not include government enforcement mechanisms or penalties. Companies can choose their own external auditors and are not required to publicly release the findings.
The agreement outlines four layers of safety controls. The first requires companies to implement internal controls to monitor their models during training and deployment, including for cybersecurity, biosecurity and chemical threats. The second requires an internal team to oversee those controls and ensure they are working as intended. The third calls for an independent external auditor or evaluator to assess the controls. The fourth requires an independent board committee to oversee reports from the internal and external review teams and ensure identified issues are addressed.
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“I think it’s a significant positive step that the leaders of every major American lab have committed to implementing robust internal controls and multiple layers of audits and reviews. This should give people more confidence that the technology each lab is building will work as intended,” Zuckerberg wrote on X.
The move comes as technology executives have raised concerns about AI safety and the rapid development of increasingly capable systems. Trump, however, has opposed efforts to slow AI development, arguing that doing so could give China an advantage in the technology race.
It is also notable that CEO Amodei signed the voluntary agreement after tensions between him and the Trump administration had received attention. Amodei met one-on-one with Trump at the White House earlier this month.
Reacting to the terminology change, Trump wrote, “The term ‘Super Intelligence’ more appropriately captures the promise, potential, and rapidly advancing capabilities of these technologies.” He also described the agreement as “morally binding.”
“They almost viewed it as a separate kind of constitution. When they signed that, it meant a lot,” Trump said.