Trump Rebrands AI as 'Super Intelligence'
Original: Can ‘super intelligence’ and a non-binding safety pact solve AI’s image problem?
Why This Matters
White House framing of AI shapes regulation, funding, and global competitiveness.
President Trump hosted top AI executives Oct. 2026 to announce the U.S. will officially call AI 'super intelligence,' backed by a non-binding 'Joint Commitment on Frontier Responsibilities' signed by industry CEOs.
President Trump convened a high-profile AI summit this week, emerging with two headline items: an executive order mandating that U.S. officials drop the term 'artificial intelligence' in favor of 'super intelligence,' and a signed industry pact called the 'Joint Commitment on Frontier Responsibilities.' Neither move carries legal weight. Trump himself described the pact as 'morally binding' rather than legally enforceable, and TechCrunch's Equity podcast hosts called it 'deeply non-binding.'
The timing was notable. Just days before the summit, Anthropic and CEO Dario Amodei were reportedly out of favor with the Trump administration. A late-night dinner invitation changed that quickly — Amodei attended a 10 p.m. sit-down with Trump, and days later was at the luncheon where the pact was signed. Trump followed up the week's events with an announcement of a new 'Super Intelligence Force.'
TechCrunch's Kirsten Korosec framed the real story as a PR pivot: the administration wants to distance the technology from public fears around job losses and existential risk. Her read: 'AI is going to kill us, it's scary, it is going to take jobs — but super intelligence is not.' Whether a vocabulary swap can shift public perception is another question entirely.