Trump order requires federal agencies to call AI “Super Intelligence” and renames NIST’s CAISI to CAISSI

No model or system is involved. This is a policy and terminology change.

• Scope: official correspondence, websites, reports and policy documents in the executive branch. Statutory text is excluded, and past regulations, contracts and grants need not be revised (Freshfields).
• CAISSI's role is unchanged: it remains industry's point of contact for voluntary testing agreements and unclassified evaluations of cyber, bio and chemical risks. Its page features recent assessments of Z.ai GLM-5.3/5.2 and DeepSeek V4 Pro (NIST).
• ai.gov: the domain remains active, with its graphics reportedly changed to show "SI" (Gizmodo).

• Definitions now collide. The order uses "SI" for the whole field. In research usage, "superintelligence" means systems that surpass human cognition, the sense popularized by Bostrom in 2014 (The Verge). The Sanders bill defines it as AI matching or exceeding human performance across a broad range of domains, or AI able to disempower humanity (Unite.AI).
• A formal definition is coming. The President's science adviser has 60 days to propose a federal definition. Freshfields notes it "may modify, expand, or supersede" existing definitions, which could affect export controls and contract terms (Freshfields).
• Practical effect on documents: federal documents will mix "AI" (statutes) and "SI" (new agency material). Search queries, document tagging and compliance tools need to map both terms.

• Claim that "SI" is more accurate. This is the administration's rationale (White House). Marketing professor Jean-Pierre Dubé points out that "superintelligence" already has a distinct technical meaning (The Next Web).
• Claim that data centers will be "very popular." A UMass poll (August 21–26, n=1,000) found 11% support local data centers and 65% oppose them. In the same poll, 57% said Trump has handled AI poorly (UMass Poll).
• Industry response: Musk said SpaceX's AI unit would become SpaceXSI, and Bezos praised the term (The Next Web). In the linked video, an interviewee answering for OpenAI (The Verge reports Sam Altman praised the term) says:
• OpenAI has used "superintelligence" for years (00:11).
• There are no plans to rename the company "Open SI" (00:52).
• The term is "more accurate," but not clearly less scary (01:22).
• People will probably keep saying "AI" (01:29).

The quotes come from automatic captions, which may contain errors.

• CAISI's earlier rename: CAISI was itself a rebrand of the US AI Safety Institute, so CAISSI is the agency's second name change (The Verge).
• Industry use of the term: Meta and Microsoft had already built their branding around "superintelligence" (The Verge).
• Political pattern: The Verge places the rename alongside Trump's earlier coinages such as "fake news." It also notes he has started using "artificial" as an insult, for example calling the press "artificial media."

• Legal limits: the order binds only executive agencies and has no enforcement mechanism. First Amendment scholars cite a 2024 Supreme Court ruling that officials cannot coerce private parties into suppressing disfavored speech (The Next Web).
• Congress is not bound, and existing laws such as the Take It Down Act still say "artificial intelligence" (The Verge).
• The accord is weak on safety specifics. It calls for internal controls and external reviews, but adds no licensing, preclearance or mandatory disclosure (Freshfields).
• Dates conflict: sources disagree on when the "ENEMY" post went up (October 5 vs. October 8).

• Federal-facing paperwork: expect solicitations and agency forms to switch to "SI." Contractors should update their federal communications, but the order imposes no direct private-sector obligation (Freshfields).
• Watch the 60-day definition. It could change regulatory scope well beyond a word swap.
• Marketing value of "superintelligent" shrinks when the word covers every AI product (The Verge).
• Data-center opposition hasn't gone away. Siting and community-relations risk is still high whatever the technology is called (UMass Poll).