Original Coverage & Source Attribution: katu.com
WASHINGTON (TNND) — President Donald Trump is pushing to replace the term “artificial intelligence” in government language, arguing the widely used label is inaccurate and should be scrapped in favor of what he calls “super” intelligence.
“We’re leading everybody with what they called artificial intelligence. But I said it’s not artificial. It’s, it’s really super,” Trump said during an October 14 rally.
The president posted online that he wants to officially ban the terms “AI” and “artificial intelligence” in all relevant documents and other materials “due to its inaccuracy.” The move follows an Executive Order Trump signed last month making a similar declaration for official correspondence, public communications, websites, reports and policy documents.
In an interview with The National News Desk on Wednesday, Aalok Mehta, Director of the Wadhwani AI Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, responded.
I think this push to rename AI is a recognition that the term has a, public sentiment problem. So, AI is very unpopular amongst the general American public. And this is something we’ve seen before from the administration of trying to rebrand something that is unpopular.
He said it may not have the intended effect. “In a lot of ways, superintelligence is an even more sort of science fiction sounding word, right? It it it go. It’s even farther down the spectrum of things humans have invented that perhaps we can’t control,” Mehta said.
The debate comes as some communities have raised concerns about the data centers that power some AI systems, and as leaders in the industry continue to warn about potential risks.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman described the stakes in stark terms while speaking at the Stanford Graduate School of Business last week:
I don’t even know what a dramatic enough word to use, but the problem coming towards us, something that we have not, as organizational leaders or countries or individuals, taken seriously.
Altman added, “I no longer think were going to be able to patch all the bugs think we’re going to have to completely switch the defense model to sort of using the same technology for sort of a new kind of defense shield.”
While Trump can direct terminology used in federal communications, he does not have the legal authority to ban people or companies from using the term “artificial intelligence.”
Observers are now watching how extensively the administration replaces the terms in official government documents—an effort that could ironically require the use of AI tools to help carry it out.
