President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to replace “artificial intelligence” and “AI” with “super intelligence” in official communications, policy and other documents. The order makes a new label the government’s business, while companies building the technology promise to police themselves.
A Quinnipiac University poll released Tuesday found that 58% of respondents disapproved of Trump’s handling of AI, while 25% approved. The survey ran Sept. 24 to Sept. 27, with a 3.8-percentage-point margin of error. CNBC reported that recent polls showed majorities of Americans expressing fear and concern about AI.
A promise from the people building it
Trump signed the two-page accord with six technology executives on Tuesday, Sept. 29. The signatories were Google’s Sundar Pichai, Tesla and SpaceX chief Elon Musk, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI President Greg Brockman and Jensen Huang of Nvidia.
The document, titled “White House Accord on Super Intelligence: A Joint Commitment on Frontier SI Responsibilities,” says each company is responsible for developing its technology safely and building trust. It calls for robust internal processes and controls to ensure systems behave as intended, and recommends four additional layers of controls.
The executives agreed to meet regularly to establish safety standards. The accord describes those commitments as voluntary, according to House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who attended Tuesday’s luncheon. Johnson called the document a “statement of principles” and said it included “robust internal controls” and “layers of internal and external review.”
The accord says “over time, it may make sense to codify these steps into laws or regulations.” For now, the companies’ commitments remain voluntary. The document’s specifics weren’t clear, and the White House didn’t immediately respond to CNBC’s request for additional information.
Trump called the executives’ accord “morally binding.” He said it was “almost like a Constitution in a way,” adding that “the biggest people in the world signed that and I signed it as president and it really is a form of protection.” He also said his administration was considering an oversight committee of “maybe 10 people” to “watch over the whole enterprise.”
A new name, not a new safeguard
The accord doesn’t declare that the name of the technology has changed. It uses Trump’s preferred term in its title. Still, Trump told reporters outside the White House’s West Wing: “We’ve changed the name officially today.” He said the name had been changed by “the biggest, the smartest, the greatest people anywhere in the world.”
A separate executive order, titled “Inaugurating The Era Of Super Intelligence,” said it was intended to “recognize the continuously advancing technological frontier and the limitless promise it offers the American people.” Trump had asked social media followers in a poll the previous week whether they preferred “SUPER INTELLIGENCE” or “SUPERIOR INTELLIGENCE.”
Asked why people shouldn’t be concerned about AI and why the government shouldn’t mandate safety guardrails, Trump answered: “Because we have people that love our country and love the world a lot.” He has argued the United States doesn’t need new AI-specific regulations, called warnings about the technology a “hoax,” and told world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly the previous week that he “rejects any attempt to construct a globalist scheme to control” AI.
Sen. Mark R. Warner, D-Va., vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, criticized that response. “The companies building the most powerful AI systems are warning us that the technology is advancing faster than our safeguards. The president’s response? To rename it and tell the companies developing it to regulate themselves,” Warner said. “But changing what we call artificial intelligence does nothing to address the very real risks that come with increasingly powerful AI systems.”
The race, the voters and the apparatus
Johnson said Republican incumbents agree the United States can’t lose its edge over China in the race for AI dominance. Trump shrugged when asked whether support for AI and data centers could hurt Republicans in the upcoming midterm election, saying, “I just have to do what’s right.”
The poll put Trump’s AI approval below his ratings on the Iran war, at 28%; the economy, at 31%; and U.S.-China policy, at 34%, in the same survey. The numbers register public disapproval. The accord leaves safety processes largely with the companies developing the technology, while the administration’s proposed committee remains under consideration.
Trump’s renaming effort follows other naming moves. During a flare-up in U.S. relations with Canada the previous month, he signed an executive order asserting that Lake Ontario would be renamed “Lake America.” After taking office the previous year, he signed an order renaming the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.” Governments worldwide have struggled to keep pace with rapid advances in AI, while leading AI companies have warned of risks to humanity and appealed for governments to work together to manage the technology.