Kathrine Frich
Social media users wasted no time tearing into the new demand.
Language is constantly evolving, but those shifts usually happen naturally over time.
When a politician tries to force a sudden change to everyday vocabulary, the public tends to push back hard.
Now, one world leader has drawn a strict line in the sand over the terminology of tomorrow’s technology.
Renaming the future
Donald Trump has a strong message for the tech world. If you still use the phrase “artificial intelligence,” the president has officially placed you on his bad side.
He wants everyone to use his preferred terminology instead. Late last month, during a speech at the United Nations, he announced that the technology should be called “Super Intelligence.”
According to HuffPost, Trump argued that the word “super” is a “much more accurate” descriptor than “artificial.” The shift was not just talk. He even signed an executive order directing the federal government to adopt the new “SI” label.
A harsh warning
The push for a rebrand took an aggressive turn on Thursday. Taking to his Truth Social platform, the president issued a bizarre and explicit threat to his critics.
“The White House considers anyone that uses the term, ‘Artificial Intelligence,’ as opposed to the highly accepted new and more accurate term, ‘Super Intelligence,’ THE ENEMY!” Trump posted.
The mandate immediately sparked widespread backlash and mockery online. The reaction echoed the public response to his other recent geographic rebrands. He previously tried to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America” and Lake Ontario to “Lake America.”
Mocked online
Social media users wasted no time tearing into the new demand. Some political figures used Trump’s own phrasing against him to highlight the absurdity of his recent actions.
Congressman Jim McGovern fired back on Facebook. “The American people consider anyone who uses the terms, ‘Gulf of America’ and ‘Lake America’ as opposed to the highly accepted and more accurate terms, ‘Gulf of Mexico’ and ‘Lake Ontario,’ as IN A CULT!” he wrote.
Even some of his usual allies refused to play along. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene simply reposted the president’s threat on X and captioned it with two words: “Artificial Intelligence.”
Meanwhile, regular voters were equally baffled by the White House’s priorities. One Reddit user summed up the collective digital eye-roll, writing that the executive branding obsession was “pure fucking insanity.”
