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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 2, 2026

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Superintelligence

Please, please, please, for the love of Ahura Mazda, stop this.

I know, it's petty, and of all the things Trump has done that I dislike, declaring that AI should be called "Superintelligence" shouldn't be at the top of my list, but it is absurdity of the highest order to issue an Executive Order based on a shower thought. "Superintelligence" actually has a meaning in the AI field, and other than trolling people I can't even see what Trump's point was in doing this. Is it supposed to "own the libs" who hate data centers? Why the heck would you immediately switch to the new term like a Party member just notified of the latest un-words?

I agreed with most of the points in your top-level and thought it was a good and thoughtful post, for whatever that is worth.

I use both terms interchangeably and in fact “Superintelligence” expresses my argument in that sentence better than “Artificial intelligence”. “Superintelligence can be used to solve, by definition, almost any problem.” “Artificial Intelligence” does not carry the same semantic meaning here.

I generally prefer “Superintelligence” to “Artificial Intelligence” but “AI” to “SI”. I use it because it is genuinely a better term to describe what we are talking about in most applications. (Which, for what it’s worth, is also why Trump picked it.)

No, it isn't. Superintelligence does not exist yet.

Superintelligence doesn't exist yet, and something that knows

How to drive cars, how to design a new rocket ship part, how to identify defective potatoes on the factory line, how to build robots to paint your house, how to build more efficient chips to power the robots, how to build factories to build the chips...

is superintelligent. That's what they were discussing. They even distinguished it later with "the AI isn't quite good enough yet".

Disliking Trump's new definition enough to object to the same word in its original definition is one of the milder cases of TDS I've seen.

And I've seen some unhinged accusations of "TDS" before, but this is pretty out there.

No, buddy. Superintelligence has a definition in AI research, and none of our existing AI is superintelligence. Trump literally issued an Execute Order requiring the federal government to call AI "SI." Federal agencies are being required to scrub references to "Artificial Intelligence" and replace it with "Super Intelligence" in all their documentation. It is absolutely retarded.

That is what I am objecting to. It's not "TDS" because I hate anything Trump does. It's annoyance that Trump issued a "deer horse" EO.

Superintelligence has a definition in AI research

Correct. That definition was stated in the comment you're objecting to, and followed through the rest of the argument. You are the one who brought Trump's use into this subthread.

none of our existing AI is superintelligence.

Again, correct. A comment starting with "I think that we will eventually..." is talking about the future, not the present.

Trump literally issued an Execute Order requiring the federal government to call AI "SI." Federal agencies are being required to scrub references to "Artificial Intelligence" and replace it with "Super Intelligence" in all their documentation. It is absolutely retarded.

That is what I am objecting to. It's not "TDS" because I hate anything Trump does. It's annoyance that Trump issued a "deer horse" EO.

...and you presumably brought up the executive order when someone was talking about arbitrarily-intelligent minds because you're overfocused on Trump.

I am speaking in the hypothetical. Yet-to-be-built compute will be used because demand for Superintelligence approaches infinity.

If Trump were talking about a hypothetical future when SI exists, I would shrug and think he's being optimistic and grandiose, as usual, but he literally issued an Execute Order requiring the federal government to call existing AI "SI." You calling it "superintelligence" just reads like you using Dear Leader's newly-minted buzzword. I mean, I don't recall you ever using that phrase until five minutes after Trump's EO.

I think "deadnaming" (neologism), or not using the "prefered pronouns" (again, recently invented set phrase) was at one point declared to be against the rules of this community. As at least one not totally irrelevent AI company refers to the technology as SI, SI is at least for that company an endonym.

Is that sufficient for the technology as a whole to at least include SI in its name, if not for SI to displace it wholly?

I propose a compromise: SAI. This avoids the collision with ASI, as SI might be viewed its shortening, and also respect the self-identification of all.

I think "deadnaming" (neologism), or not using the "prefered pronouns" (again, recently invented set phrase) was at one point declared to be against the rules of this community.

Even if "deadnaming" were against the rules (strictly speaking, it is not - we will mod you for being an asshole about it, but not just for referring to Caitlyn as Bruce), it does not apply to technologies arbitrarily reacronymed by Executive Order.

Realistically you can call it whatever you want.

From a technical standpoint it is the field of Artificial Intelligence(AI) The fields goal is to reach Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and eventually Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI).

You may call it SI or SAI all you want but the only thing you are communicating is that you don’t understand the boundary of word semantics as it relates to technical function. If you wish to convey lack of competency in favor of political tribal signaling that is your prerogative but don’t expect anyone else to join you who isn’t already in the communist party.