President Trump is trying to change the term "artificial intelligence" (AI), which has been used for decades, to "superintelligence" (SI). In September this year, he first criticized the word "artificial" in a public speech, suggesting it implied falsehood, and then signed an executive order requiring federal agencies to use "SI" instead of "AI" in official communications. More directly, he also made statements on social platforms: anyone who continues to call it "artificial intelligence" will be seen by the White House as an "enemy."

This pressure is seeping into Silicon Valley. Musk was the first to show loyalty, renaming his SpaceX AI to SpaceX SI; Salesforce's Benioff followed closely, changing AIForce to SIForce; NVIDIA's Huang Renxun not only publicly supported "superintelligence research," but also announced a $1 billion investment in related scientific work; Microsoft's Nadella repeatedly used the new term in articles about AI safety, and he attended the meeting together with Zuckerberg, Pichai, and Bezos.

The concept is flattened, but the controversy remains unresolved

Critics point out that this name change seems more like political rhetoric than technical clarification. AI covers voice recognition, image generation, and large language models, with capabilities that vary widely; while "superintelligence" specifically refers to systems that surpass human cognition in all aspects, as discussed in Nick Bostrom's 2014 book on its risks. Equating the two may dilute the significance of real breakthroughs and put companies in a dilemma: it sounds good, but it's hard to highlight future upgrades through naming. The balancing act in Silicon Valley between complying with policy, competing for business opportunities, and accurately describing technology has just begun, because changing a name is easy, but the actual boundaries of technological capability will not move accordingly.