Trump Tells UN He's Renaming AI "Super Intelligence"

President Trump told the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday that artificial intelligence will be renamed "super intelligence" in all U.S. government documents, framing the change as a more accurate description of the technology while rejecting international efforts to regulate it, according to The Hill's reporting on the speech.

Trump was direct about both the name change and his underlying reasoning. "The United States also totally rejects any attempt to construct a globality scheme to control for the artificial intelligence being spoken of so much now, hereinafter called super intelligence. Changing the name," Trump told the assembled body. He explained his objection to the existing terminology directly: "The use of the word artificial makes intelligence sound fake. It is not fake. It's actually amazing. But we have to be careful. In fact, it is exactly the opposite of what it purports." He concluded: "From this point forward, all of United States documents and hopefully the world's will be changed to use the much more accurate term super as opposed to artificial. In other words, welcome to the new world of super intelligence, S.I."

Trump's UN declaration followed a documented, deliberate lead-up. He first floated renaming AI to "supreme intelligence" in late 2025, saying at the time the decision was up to industry leaders, according to The Hill's earlier reporting. More recently, Trump posted a poll on Truth Social pitching alternative names including "Superior Intelligence," "Extreme Intelligence," and "Supreme Intelligence," asking followers to vote on which they preferred, with more than 27,000 users responding within hours.

Trump used the same UN remarks to directly address, and reject, the wave of AI extinction warnings we've tracked extensively this month. According to the Washington Times, cited by KFI AM 640, Trump said: "The very same people who said we'd all be dead in 12 years because of global warming... are now saying that AI is going to kill us all," drawing an explicit comparison between AI risk warnings and what he characterized as past exaggerated environmental predictions. This directly echoes our earlier reporting on Trump calling AI risk warnings a "hoax" and a "sick conspiracy" and connects to Jensen Huang's own recent dismissal of AI extinction warnings as "doomsday narratives" with "0% chance" of materializing.

Trump tied the renaming directly to global competitive positioning, according to The Hill's separate reporting on his broader UN remarks: "Whoever wins S.I., whoever wins super intelligence wins. That's the group that wins." He reinforced his opposition to regulation in the same speech: "I'm not going to stifle growth of something that will be bigger than the Industrial Revolution." Trump also said the U.S. will not restrict the technology's growth, though he noted the Justice Department would intervene if deemed necessary.

This declaration arrives directly amid the intense global AI safety debate we've covered extensively throughout September, including the UN's own independent scientific panel warning that current AI safeguards are "unravelling" and King Charles III personally convening the CEOs of OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, and Nvidia over AI safety concerns. Trump's remarks come specifically amid what The Hill's reporting described as "spiking fears about the technology" following a former Anthropic researcher's warning that AI could soon threaten humanity, fueling the broader Washington debate over regulation that Trump used this UN platform to directly reject.

This announcement is worth understanding for any business tracking U.S. federal AI policy and terminology, since an official government rebranding effort, even one that's primarily symbolic, signals the administration's continued, consistent framing of AI in explicitly positive, competitive terms rather than acknowledging the safety concerns raised by industry leaders and international bodies.

For businesses evaluating how U.S. AI policy compares internationally, this speech reinforces a genuinely stark divergence from other global approaches we've tracked closely, including von der Leyen's own call for pacing frontier AI development and the UN panel's warnings, setting up a continued, unresolved split in how major governments are approaching AI governance internationally.

What did Trump announce about renaming AI?
Trump told the UN General Assembly that artificial intelligence will officially be renamed "super intelligence," or "S.I.," in all U.S. government documents, arguing the term "artificial" inaccurately makes the technology sound fake.

Did Trump address AI safety concerns in the same speech?
Yes. Trump directly dismissed AI extinction warnings, comparing them to what he characterized as past exaggerated predictions about climate change, and reaffirmed that the U.S. would reject global efforts to regulate AI development.

Is this the first time Trump has proposed renaming AI?
No. Trump first floated the idea of renaming AI to "supreme intelligence" in late 2025, and more recently ran an informal Truth Social poll asking followers to choose between several alternative names before declaring "super intelligence" official at the UN.

President Trump told the UN General Assembly that the United States will officially rename artificial intelligence to "super intelligence" in all government documents, arguing the word "artificial" inaccurately makes the technology sound fake, while explicitly rejecting global efforts to regulate AI. Trump used the same remarks to dismiss recent AI extinction warnings, comparing them to past exaggerated climate change predictions, and framed the announcement around global competitive stakes, saying "whoever wins super intelligence wins." The declaration followed a deliberate lead-up, including an earlier Truth Social poll asking followers to choose between alternative AI names, and lands directly amid intense global debate over AI safety, following recent warnings from a former Anthropic researcher and the UN's own independent scientific panel.