Superintelligence instead of AI? ... Trump has changed Silicon Valley’s terminology, too

[Financial News] The term “superintelligence” (SI) is beginning to be used in Silicon Valley instead of artificial intelligence (AI). The shift comes after U.S. President Donald Trump pressured people to use SI instead of AI.
U.S. broadcaster CNBC reported on the 30th (local time) that Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, among others, began using the term SI in third-quarter earnings announcements this year.
Tesla CEO Musk used both terms while discussing humanoid robots on a conference call following the company’s earnings announcement on the 21st, saying, “We are not actually using any kind of advanced AI or SI yet.” Zuckerberg also said on a conference call that day, “Our goal is to deliver personalized SI to everyone.” Microsoft (MS) continued to use the term AI in its earnings announcement, but mentioned SI a total of eight times in a shareholder letter last week. The letter, sent in the name of CEO Satya Nadella, said, “As Microsoft enters the era of SI, the central question is how to deliver meaningful outcomes that every country and company requires.” IBM CEO Arvind Krishna used both AI and SI in the company’s earnings announcement, while Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan also cited the semiconductor supply shortage, noting that it was “due to unprecedented demand for SI.”
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang said as early as last month on X (formerly Twitter), “SI offers an incredible opportunity to advance discovery and production, security, health, and prosperity.”
Amazon and Alphabet, however, appeared to stick with the term AI in their earnings announcements.
Earlier, during a keynote address on the 22nd of last month, President Trump abruptly said that the term AI makes AI sound fake and proposed using SI instead. He also said he hoped that not only U.S. official documents but the entire world would use the new term he had proposed. On the 29th of the same month, he signed an executive order directing the federal government to use SI rather than AI in official documents, websites, reports, and other materials. On the 8th of this month, he intensified the pressure, saying, “The White House considers anyone who uses the term artificial intelligence instead of superintelligence—the new, more accurate term that is widely accepted—to be an enemy.”
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, however, said, “At this stage, AI is the right term.”

[email protected] Kang Gu-gwi Reporter