Trump Renames AI 'Superintelligence.' Most Americans Aren't Buying It.

Trump's "SI" Rebrand Faces 89% Public Skepticism

Only 1 in 9 U.S. adults—just 11%—thinks President Donald Trump's push to rename artificial intelligence "superintelligence" will have a positive effect, according to a Fast Company survey of roughly 1,000 people by market research firm Early Studies.

The skepticism is striking because the change is already underway. Trump signed an executive order in late September directing federal agencies to use "superintelligence," or "SI," in official communications. The Department of Justice has told its staff to comply, and other agencies are expected to follow.

In the private sector, Elon Musk announced on October 4 that SpaceXAI would become SpaceXSI. Musk, whose xAI venture competes directly with OpenAI, did not explain the timing—or whether the rename carries trademark costs. Trump has separately labeled anyone still calling the technology AI "THE ENEMY," a branding choice unlikely to soften public concern.

What Trump has not explained is how a vocabulary change in Washington might close the gap with the American public he claims to champion.

What does the polling actually show?

The numbers cut against the rebrand. In the Fast Company survey, 53% of Americans said people they know would not feel comfortable calling the technology "superintelligence." A separate YouGov poll found 53% prefer the existing term "AI," with fewer than 10% backing Trump's preferred label.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman offered a half-measure of support. He called superintelligence "a more accurate term" than current branding—but conceded he does not think people will find it "less scary." Even the CEO of the company most associated with the technology is not promising the new label will calm public fears.

The takeaway: A president can mandate vocabulary in federal agencies. He cannot mandate usage at the kitchen table.

Does Trump have a point about the original term?

He does, and the history matters. "Artificial intelligence" traces to a 1955 proposal by Dartmouth mathematician John McCarthy for a summer workshop the following year. Seven decades later, the term covers everything from spam filters to large language models, which is the core problem.

Tony Thorne, a lexicologist at King's College London, told Fast Company that AI's vagueness helped the field thrive. "The term's weaknesses—vague and imprecise, ambiguous since the first part looks negative and the second impressive or reassuring—are also its strengths," he said.

Thorne labeled Trump's preferred term "boosterist" and "triumphalist." "Usage, not regulation, decides a word's take-up and survival," he added. The polling suggests he is right.

The takeaway: The 1955 term is flawed, but seven decades of muscle memory outlast an executive order.

Is "superintelligence" itself a misnomer?

Some of those closest to the technology think so. Meredith Broussard, a professor at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and author of Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World, objects to "intelligence" in any label. "It's extremely misleading to call it 'intelligence,'" she said. "It makes people think that there is a brain inside the machine, and there absolutely is not."

Broussard floated "calculating machine" as a more accurate name and acknowledged tech PR teams would reject it. Thorne prefers "cognitive computing agent," or "CCA," with similarly low expectations for adoption. Broussard set a clear bar for any replacement: "Any new name has to be firmly attached to reality."

The takeaway: Swapping a vague label for an overpromising one may deepen, not resolve, public confusion.

So what next?

The rebrand carries costs the executive order does not address. In industry usage, "superintelligence" denotes AI that systematically outperforms humans across domains—a threshold current systems do not reliably meet. Branding today's models with that label risks the same false confidence that has produced product demos that fail to replicate in production.

Altman's candor captures the deeper tension: even the industry's most prominent CEO does not expect the new branding to soothe fears. With 53% of Americans preferring the old term and federal agencies now ordered to abandon it, the gap between Washington vocabulary and public usage has rarely been wider. Whether markets, investors, or foreign regulators adopt "SI" is the next test—and the administration has offered no roadmap.