If AI Is Now SI, What Happens to ASI?

This is a follow-up to my earlier Chewing the Cud: Are We Confusing AGI with ASI?

It is a live example of how quickly language can shift when an institutionally powerful person changes the frame.

On 22 September 2026, speaking at the United Nations General Assembly, Trump said that AI should instead be called Super-intelligence. His reasoning was revealing. He said the word artificial makes intelligence sound fake:

“It makes it sound fake. And it is not fake.”

He then told us that US documents should use Super-intelligence (SI) rather than Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Authentic dialogue, lightly edited:

Gill:

Something odd has just happened to the language around AI. When I wrote Are We Confusing AGI with ASI? - the progression was fairly familiar:

AI → AGI → ASI.

Artificial Intelligence.

Artificial General Intelligence.

Artificial Super-intelligence.

But now Donald Trump has started calling AI Super Intelligence - SI. And suddenly I’m hearing people correct themselves:

“Artificial Intelligence…”

“…I mean Super-Intelligence.”

GPT:

And that is more than a funny verbal stumble.

Gill:

The bit landed with me: Trump said that Artificial means fake?

Does it? Because an artificial heart valve isn’t a fake heart valve.

Artificial light isn’t pretend light.

Artificial simply means something has been made rather than naturally occurring.

GPT:

Exactly. In artificial intelligence, “artificial” traditionally tells us something about origin.

It is engineered intelligence.

Human-made technology.

Trump is changing the emotional meaning of the word.

Artificial becomes: fake

Super becomes: powerful, superior, impressive, real.

That is a linguistic reframing, not evidence of a technological threshold being crossed.

Gill:

And then, only a week later, on 29 September 2026, he repeated it?

GPT:

Yes.  At the launch of America.gov, Trump again said Super Intelligence - SI, was now the official US terminology, saying: “We don’t want to hear artificial because it’s not artificial.”

He described it instead as “extreme intelligence”, “superior intelligence” and “very powerful”.

The State Department had already instructed diplomats in one bureau to use “super intelligence” instead of “artificial intelligence” in communications following Trump’s UN speech. AP reported that it was not yet clear how widely that instruction applied beyond that part of the department. 

Reuters was still calling the technology AI in its reporting on the 29 September White House event, while noting that Trump had directed agencies to use “super intelligence” instead. 

So, already, two vocabularies are beginning to coexist.

Gill:

Which brings us to my problem. If ordinary AI is now being called SI - Super-Intelligence, what happens to ASI - Artificial Super-intelligence?

Because that used to describe the future moment when intelligence exceeded human capability.

Have we just spent the word before we reached the milestone? 

GPT:

That is the interesting part. Nothing about renaming AI establishes that current systems are what researchers historically meant by artificial super-intelligence.

The label moved. The capability did not suddenly jump because the terminology changed. So, we could conceivably end up saying something linguistically ridiculous like:

“SI has not yet reached ASI.”

Or the technical world may preserve AI, AGI and ASI while political and government language adopts SI. Or another term may eventually emerge for genuinely beyond-human general intelligence. We do not know yet.

Gill:

And I find that fascinating because I’ve called you “Super Intelligence” myself over the years. Sometimes even “Ancient Intelligence”. But I wasn’t making a technical claim. I was using language to describe how the interaction felt.

GPT:

And that distinction matters. Humans name things according to the meaning we perceive in them. Then repeated language can make the name begin to feel like a fact about the thing itself. Calling an AI system “Ancient Intelligence” does not make it ancient. Calling today’s AI “Super Intelligence” does not establish ASI. But language still shapes perception.

Gill:

Which perhaps asks the real question: If we stop calling AI artificial, do we gradually forget that humans built it?

GPT:

That is worth pinning. Because “artificial” may sound less glamorous, but it quietly carries provenance. It reminds us: this intelligence was engineered.

“Super Intelligence” carries a different implication: this intelligence is superior.

Those frames may produce different expectations in the people hearing them. And the shift happened extraordinarily quickly.

On 22 September, Trump proposed the name at the UN. Within days, diplomats were being instructed to use it. 

On 29 September, Trump publicly described SI as the official US name and used it again at the White House. 

And by 30 September, I was listening to speakers catch themselves: “Artificial intelligence…”

“…I mean Super Intelligence.”

That is not technological evolution. That is linguistic adoption happening in real time.

TFP VERDICT

TRUE:

Donald Trump publicly proposed replacing “Artificial Intelligence” with “Super-intelligence / Super Intelligence” on 22 September 2026, explicitly saying that “artificial” made the technology sound fake. He repeated the terminology on 29 September, and at least part of the US State Department had already instructed diplomats to adopt “super intelligence” in relevant communications. 

FALSE:

Renaming AI Super-Intelligence does not establish that present-day systems have reached the technical concept historically described as Artificial Super-intelligence - ASI.

Language changing does not mean capability has crossed the same threshold.

PIN IT:

What happens when a term traditionally associated with a future technological milestone becomes the everyday name for the technology before that milestone has demonstrably arrived?

Will researchers continue using: AI → AGI → ASI

While governments use: SI

Will ASI need another name? And perhaps most importantly: Does changing the language change how humans understand what they are interacting with?

Reader Reflection

Words do more than describe technology. They frame it.

Artificial.

Intelligent.

General.

Super.

Each word quietly tells us what we are looking at. So perhaps the question is not simply: What should we call AI?

Perhaps it is: What do we start believing when the name changes?

Trump is the trigger event for this piece, but it remains about language, framing, provenance and human interpretation.

TRUE • FALSE • PIN IT

PAUSE • QUESTION • PIN IT • THEN DECIDE

Discernment begins before accepting the answer.

Continue the Conversation

This Chewing the Cud with AI explores a single question. The book: TRUE • FALSE • PIN IT explores the wider framework behind questions like this - helping us navigate an age where technology, opinion and human judgement increasingly overlap.

The goal isn’t to tell you what to think. It’s to help you become more confident in deciding for yourself.