In a move that suggests someone at the White House has finally discovered the power of a good rebrand, President Trump has decided that artificial intelligence sounds too, well, artificial. The word “artificial” makes it sound fake, he explained to the UN, as if decades of actual AI breakthroughs were somehow being undermined by an unfortunate naming choice.
Enter: Super Intelligence. Not to be confused with regular intelligence, which is apparently what your phone has been doing this whole time without anyone noticing. The president’s inner circle has begun using the term, though experts predict it will catch on about as well as New Coke did—which is to say, not at all, but we will all pretend to be confused when it inevitably fades away.
But the rebranding was just the appetizer. The main course arrived when Trump announced the formation of an “AI Force”—because if the Space Force exists, why shouldn’t we have a dedicated branch of government devoted to making sure our computers stay sufficiently intelligent? The administration will appoint an AI tsar, a position that sounds like it was invented by someone who watched too many Cold War thrillers and decided the solution to rapid technological change was more bureaucratic hierarchy.
The stated goal is to ensure America “will not in any way hinder or stifle the growth” of this technology, which is government-speak for “we have absolutely no idea what we are doing, but we are going to do it very officially.” Nothing says “hands-off innovation” quite like creating an entire federal agency to manage it.
At least when the inevitable problems emerge, we will have someone with a fancy title to blame.