What’s with Donald Trump and renaming things? First, the Gulf of Mexico became the Gulf of America ā in US federal documents, if not globally. Then Lake Ontario became Lake America. Now he wants to rebrand the defining technology of our time: artificial intelligence (AI).
Earlier this month, the US presidentĀ claimed on his Truth Social platform that the term artificial intelligence is “inaccurate” and “ineloquent.” He said “superior,” “extreme,” or “supreme” intelligence were better alternatives.
In a three-day social mediaĀ poll, Trump fans chose “Super Intelligence” (SI) byĀ about 65% to 35% (for Superior Intelligence), allowing him to announce at the United NationsĀ General Assembly last week that US federal documents would use his new term going forward.
‘AI is not superintelligence’
The tech industry has yet to adopt the phrase, however, while academics warn thatĀ superintelligence is a future term for when technology can beat humans across the board. They say the current AI models are years away from that milestone.
“Most AI is not superintelligenceĀ ā it’s just different intelligence,” Pedro Domingos, a computer science professor from the University of Washington, told DW. “AI isĀ doing different things from what humans do, so calling it superintelligence is misleading.”
Computer scientists and mathematicians coined the name “artificial intelligence”Ā in 1956 at a summer workshopĀ at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. “Artificial”Ā simply meant made by humans, as opposed to natural human intelligence.
Not all experts agreedĀ with the name. In the book “Machines Who Think,” historian Pamela McCorduck cited AI pioneer Arthur Samuel, who said the term “makes you think there’s something kind of phony about this.”
Despite this, the name artificial intelligence has stuckĀ for 70 years.Ā Critics say changing it now will not quieten the many fears around AI, including job losses, human obsolescenceĀ or machines slipping out of our control.
Rebrand won’t quell AI fears
“The name changeĀ is fostering these kinds of fears: ‘Oh, this is superintelligence and it’s going to make humans obsolete,Ā turn on us and take our jobs’,”Ā warned Domingos. “If you want to maximize the backlash against AI, rename it Superior Intelligence.”
Those public fears are growing fast.Ā In a Public First poll for Politico earlier this month, about half of respondents in six countries ā the United States, Canada, France, Spain, Germany and the United Kingdom ā backed a pause in further AI development to reduce the risk that the new techĀ could destroy humanity.
A separateĀ CNN/SSRS poll found nearly nine in 10Ā Americans areĀ more concerned than excited about AI surpassing human intelligence.
Those concerns have already reached the US Congress. Last week, Vermont’s independent Senator Bernie Sanders co-introduced a bill to “permanently ban the development of artificial superintelligence”Ā that humans cannot control.
The legislation also calls for aĀ pause on advanced AI development until federal testing and oversight are in place.
A branding gift to help the AI boom?
Trump’s new term could, however, suit the major US AI players, who are keen to play up their advanced models.Ā Those systems already outperform humansĀ on many specialized tasks and until recently were far ahead of China.
Yet both Anthropic, the firm behind the Claude model, and OpenAI, which created ChatGPT, have pushed back plans to go public. Some market watchers blamed the delays onĀ recent scares where AI models hacked into computer systems orĀ ran tasks they were not meant to.ran tasks they were not meant to.
With Chinese models closing much of the quality gap with muchĀ less computing power, US labs may still appreciateĀ the branding that helps confirm they are still leading the AI race. Global spending on AI is expected to surpass $1 trillion (ā¬880 billion), according to Goldman Sachs research.
“The [US] labs have every interest in calling it super,Ā hyper, superior and whatnot intelligence, because it’s playing up their capabilities. It’s like just marketing,” said Domingos, the author of the 2015 book “The Master Algorithm.”
Superintelligence remains a moving targetĀ
While the current AI modelsĀ keep improving and can already run many tasks on their own, the next step that many labs discussĀ is AI systems that improve themselves. That’s called recursive self-improvementĀ or RSI.
On that journey,Ā Elon Musk has predicted that AI learning could be automated, with limited human input, by the end of this year or 2027. OpenAI thinks it could take a year longer. But even then, AI systems won’tĀ be fully recursive.
JĆ¼rgen Schmidhuber, a German computer scientist based in Switzerland, argued in a blog post earlier this monthĀ that “full RSI, however, will require not just self-improving [AI] software but self-improving hardware in the physical world.”
In other words, to reach superintelligence or RSI,Ā tech companies would have to produce chips, humanoid robots and even replace entire factories without human input.
While AI is alreadyĀ speeding up chip design, it cannot yet run the foundry alone. Self-improving machines, with no human input, are likely stillĀ decades away.
Beyond the science of machine learning,Ā politics will likely play a bigger role in whether Super Intelligence sticks. While Trump claimed Chinese President Xi Jinping liked the name, China has yet to show any signs of changing from AI.
Ā At aĀ tech summitĀ on Tuesday with key industry leaders, Trump signed an executive order instructing US government bodies and agencies to start using the term SI. While someĀ Big TechĀ leaders have adoptedĀ it, experts sayĀ the new term is unlikely to catch on.
“Knowing the political orientation of most people in the [AI] field, they’re more likely to have the opposite reaction, which is: ‘To hell with you. We’re going to call it artificial intelligence even more than before’,”Ā Domingos said.
Edited by: Rob Mudge