Trump signs order renaming AI 'super intelligence' after White House tech lunch

By Splitfeed EditorialLast updated Sep 30, 2026, 21:20 UTC

On September 29, 2026, President Donald Trump hosted a luncheon for technology and artificial intelligence executives in the East Room of the White House. After the meeting, he signed an executive order directing federal agencies to stop using the term "artificial intelligence" and replace it with "super intelligence" in official communications. Prominent attendees including Elon Musk and Jensen Huang signed a White House accord on super intelligence safety. Trump also called on companies including Meta, OpenAI, and Microsoft to self-regulate rather than submit to government-imposed rules, and the administration launched a new AI-powered government website tied to the initiative.

The story matters beyond its surface oddity because it touches on two genuinely contested policy questions: who should govern advanced AI development, and whether the language used to describe it shapes public understanding and regulatory appetite. The executive order applies only within the federal executive branch, meaning the terminology shift carries no binding force on the private sector or on Congress. The self-regulation call places the administration firmly against a mandatory oversight framework at a moment when other governments are moving in the opposite direction. Whether the safety accord signed by Musk, Huang, and others constitutes a meaningful commitment or a performative gesture is a real point of dispute.

The anti-AI camp is largely dismissive. Mrs. Betty Bowers described Trump as "a simple-minded bought-and-paid-for stooge for tech" on the self-regulation question, while Jeff Tiedrich summarized the event as "dumbfuckery." Scott Horton framed the rebranding as election-cycle posturing designed to project competence without delivering substance, and Middle Age Riot questioned the basic competence of everyone involved in drafting the materials. Kim Weeden offered a drier take, suggesting the rebrand did not go far enough, a comment that reads as satire of the premise. The pro-AI camp has not yet responded publicly; a story like this would typically draw arguments from that side that clearer, more ambitious language signals genuine commitment to transformative technology and that industry self-regulation produces faster and more flexible safety standards than government rulemaking. From the middle ground, Dare Obasanjo noted simply that a Truth Social poll had "a lot more impact than I expected," suggesting surprise that informal public input visibly shaped the final policy framing.

The arguments to watch in the coming weeks are whether Congress or federal agencies push back on the terminology directive, whether the companies named in the self-regulation call publish any binding commitments under the safety accord, and whether the accord's language surfaces in any regulatory or legal proceeding that would test how much weight it actually carries.