Trump Renamed AI 'Super Intelligence.' The Accord Says 'Unites States.'

A cartoon parody song about the week the federal government renamed artificial intelligence.

The executive order, signed September 29, directs every department and agency to use "Super Intelligence" and "SI" in official correspondence, public communications, websites, reports and policy documents, and to stop acknowledging the terms "Artificial Intelligence" or "AI" altogether. Section 3 of that same order goes on to define "Super Intelligence" as the technologies and systems the law already calls artificial intelligence. 1

The name was chosen in a three-day poll of the president's social media followers, who picked "Super Intelligence" over "Superior Intelligence" by about 65 percent to 35 percent. He had earlier called the old term "inaccurate" and "ineloquent," and told the United Nations General Assembly that the word "artificial" makes intelligence "sound fake." Announcing the order outside the West Wing, he said the name had been "officially changed by the biggest, the smartest, the greatest people anywhere in the world." 23

The six technology executives at the White House that day signed a separate two-page document, the "White House Accord on Super Intelligence — Joint Commitment on Frontier Responsibilities." It sets out four layers of internal and external controls, carries no enforcement mechanism, and leaves companies to pick their own auditors and appoint their own oversight boards. Asked whether it bound anyone to anything, the president called it "morally binding" and described it as "tremendous self-policing"; Elon Musk's own summary was that the companies had agreed to grade each other's homework. 45

What the internet kept was the page itself. Sundar Pichai posted the accord, and readers found that the line identifying the signer at the top of it reads "President of the Unites States." 6

The numbers had already landed. A Quinnipiac University poll released the same afternoon put approval of the president's handling of artificial intelligence at 25 percent against 58 percent disapproval — his lowest-rated issue in the survey, below the economy and the war with Iran — and found 79 percent of voters saying safety matters more than staying at the forefront of innovation. 7

The song and every frame of the cartoon are original to this episode.