President Donald Trump has a new name for artificial intelligence, and he’s pitching it at the highest levels, including to Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
“Like almost everyone else, he seemed to like calling the poorly and inaccurately named Artificial Intelligence to a far more accurate and important name, SUPER INTELLIGENCE,” Trump wrote on social media Friday morning, a day after a state dinner with Xi and top tech executives. “That would be ‘SUPER!’ Everyone last night agreed, also.”
The former reality TV star, who built an empire stamping “Trump” on hotels, towers and steaks, is running a familiar play on an unfamiliar product: a rebrand.
It comes as polls show deep public anxiety about AI, a term that technologists have used for more than 70 years, and as Trump resists policies that would slow down the technology.
Xi has not publicly weighed in on the rebrand, but in his remarks, his interpreters have continued to use “artificial intelligence” to render rengong zhineng, the Chinese term for the technology.
Trump’s administration, however, is getting on message. At a United Nations Security Council meeting Wednesday, White House science adviser Michael Kratsios hailed “the most consequential technological development of our time — superintelligence, formerly known as AI.” The State Department has told diplomats to use “super intelligence” in all communications, according to an email obtained by the Associated Press.
That name is taken, however. Academics have used “superintelligence” since the 1990s to describe machines that don’t exist yet. Philosopher Nick Bostrom defined it in a 1998 paper as “intellect that is much smarter than the best human brains in practically every field, including scientific creativity, general wisdom and social skills.”
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The post Trump’s newest rebranding project: The technology formerly known as AI appeared first on Washington Post.
