Trump orders federal agencies to stop saying AI and call it Super Intelligence
The rename moves no system in or out of scope today. The order's 60-day plan to draft a federal definition that may supersede 15 U.S.C. 9401(3) could.
The new name covers exactly what AI covers today. The order's 60-day clock is aimed at the definition itself.
President Trump signed an executive order on September 29, 2026, titled "Inaugurating the Era of Super Intelligence." It tells executive agencies to write "Super Intelligence" and "SI" where they would have written "Artificial Intelligence" and "AI." The White House fact sheet says the new name "conveys the true capabilities of the technologies being developed today."
The new name covers exactly the old scope
Section 2 says where the new terms apply: "official correspondence, public communications, websites, reports, policy documents, and other non-statutory documents within the executive branch." It does not require changes to "previously issued regulations, Presidential actions, contracts, grants, or other historical documents." The order sets no compliance date for the switch.
Section 3(a) defines SI by pointing back. For the order's purposes, SI means the technologies encompassed by "artificial intelligence" as defined in section 9401(3) of title 15. So on day one, the rename moves no system in or out of scope. Fox Business and Just the News report the same terms. Tech leaders signed a separate, voluntary accord the same day, which Fox Business describes as "morally binding." We cover the accord separately.
What 9401(3) says now
The definition sits in the National Artificial Intelligence Initiative Act of 2020, enacted as division E of Pub. L. 116-283. The text at Cornell's LII reads:
The term 'artificial intelligence' means a machine-based system that can, for a given set of human-defined objectives, make predictions, recommendations or decisions influencing real or virtual environments.
The rest of the paragraph describes perceiving environments, building models, and using inference to formulate options. That is a functional test. The text names no model size, no training compute, and no capability bar.
The 60-day clock points at the statute
Section 3(b) carries the only deadline. Within 60 days, which lands on November 28, the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology must submit to the President "proposed legislative language" for a federal definition of SI that "reflects the capabilities described in section 1." Section 1 describes technology that "amplifies human ingenuity."
The submission must assess whether the new definition should "modify, expand upon, or otherwise supersede" the 9401(3) definition. It must also carry "any proposed conforming amendments, as appropriate, to existing statutory references to 'artificial intelligence' and 'AI.'" It is a proposal to the President. Only Congress can change the statute.
The order does not say what the definition will contain. Its text raises three questions:
- Does a definition that reflects "the capabilities described in section 1" keep the functional test, or add a capability bar the current text lacks?
- If it supersedes 9401(3), which statutory references get conforming amendments, and which keep the current wording?
- Do the exemptions for existing contracts and regulations carry into the legislation, or cover only the change of terms?
The word already has a different meaning in one live proposal. The Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act from Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Greg Casar defines superintelligence by performance that exceeds humans across most domains.
Federal buying runs on a second definition
Agency AI purchasing does not start from 9401(3). OMB memo M-25-22, dated April 3, 2025, takes its scope from the "AI system" definition in the Advancing American AI Act. That Act, per the statutory note at LII, borrows "artificial intelligence" from section 238(g) of the FY2019 defense authorization act.
M-25-22 excludes "any common commercial product within which artificial intelligence is embedded, such as a word processor or map navigation system." It applies to contracts awarded on solicitations issued 180 days or more after the memo, and to options exercised after that point. Its contract terms cover AI use disclosure, ongoing testing and monitoring, and data and model portability. Whether a new SI definition reaches procurement depends on which statutory references the conforming amendments touch. The order does not say.
Why a build studio cares
The rename binds agency documents, not vendors. The 60-day draft is different, because the contract terms M-25-22 asks agencies to use attach to whatever counts as an AI system, and today a product can be measured against two definitions with different words: "predictions, recommendations or decisions" in 9401(3), and "machine learning algorithms or other forms of artificial intelligence" in the acquisition chain. If you sell software to an agency, the useful work before November 28 is a written list of which features predict, recommend, or decide, which run on machine learning, and which sit inside a commercial product the exclusion might cover. We draw that list as part of the data-flow map in a software audit. When the proposed text appears, you compare it feature by feature.
Next step: read Section 3 of the order next to the current 9401(3) text. If you sell software to a federal agency and want your features sorted against both definitions, write to us at hello@gattyworks.com.