On September 29, 2026, President Trump signed Executive Order 14434, “Inaugurating the Era of Super Intelligence.” It directs executive departments and agencies to use the terms “Super Intelligence” and “SI” in place of “Artificial Intelligence” and “AI” in official correspondence, public communications, websites, reports and policy documents. Previously issued regulations, presidential actions, contracts, grants and other historical documents are left unaltered.
The order gives the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology 60 days to propose, in consultation with agency heads, legislative language establishing a federal definition of “Super Intelligence,” including whether it should supersede the existing statutory definition of artificial intelligence in 15 U.S.C. 9401(3), and to recommend any further executive action needed. The accompanying White House fact sheet frames the change as recognising that frontier systems have moved beyond what “artificial intelligence” describes, and points to the Genesis Mission and the July 2025 AI Action Plan as the policy context.
The order was signed the same day as a voluntary White House accord with six AI and chip companies on frontier model controls. On September 30, California’s governor answered with an executive order of his own declaring that the technology will be called “Artificial Intelligence” in California.
Why it matters: it is the first time a government has formally renamed the technology, and it pushes the word “superintelligence”, long used by safety researchers for systems far beyond human ability, into ordinary federal usage for today’s products. What it does not show: the order changes vocabulary, not law. It creates no new obligations for AI developers, and the statutory definition stays in force unless Congress adopts the definition the order asks for.