Trump's Super Intelligence order defines the new term as whatever AI already covered

Read as an operational definition, the order's wording is circular. "Super Intelligence" means "the technologies and systems encompassed by the term 'artificial intelligence'" ^[3]. Every system that counted as AI before 29 September counts as SI after it, and no system joins or leaves the category ^[1][16].

The order's case for the change is a claim about capability ^[2]. Capability can in principle be measured. The definition sets no threshold for it, though. Under the order, a system does not have to pass any test to be called SI. It only has to have been called AI already ^[16].

Nick Bostrom's version, popularized in his 2014 book, does set a bar: "any intellect that greatly exceeds the cognitive performance of humans in virtually all domains of interest" ^[4]. Researchers were using the word for hypothetical, highly capable technologies long before the order ^[5]. In that usage, calling today's products superintelligent would be a claim about how they perform against humans. Even that bar is soft. Melanie Mitchell, an AI researcher at the Santa Fe Institute, said the term is still not completely defined, partly because nobody has defined the components of human-level intelligence ^[6]. "None of this has rigorous meaning. People can use these terms to mean what they want," she said ^[7].

So the scientific objection is narrower than it first looks. Bostrom's word was always loose. The federal version goes further: it gives the word a precise meaning, and that meaning is a synonym for AI ^[3][4][16].

Darrell West, who researches AI policy at the Brookings Institution, sees the order as an effort to rebrand the technology as public sentiment turns against it ^[9]. "The hope is that changing the name improves public acceptance of the technology" so that "the AI revolution will go forward," West said. "But I think that is fanciful thinking." ^[11] Trump has posted that "AI taking over the World, destroying Humanity, and all other things bad, is a HOAX," and he has criticized AI leaders who called for regulation ^[13]. Asked about West's assertion, the White House referred Nature to Trump's public statements on the need for a new term ^[12].

The polling that Nature cites makes the choice of word odd. In a US poll last month, about 8 in 10 respondents were worried about the pace of AI development. Nearly 9 in 10 said they were more concerned than excited about the prospect of AI exceeding human intelligence ^[10]. Nature's report does not name the poll or give its sample size, so the denominator is unknown. That second question asked about roughly the outcome Bostrom's word was used to describe ^[4][10]. The federal government has now made that word the official name for the whole field ^[1][16].