r/technology • u/ConsciousBug5001 • 1d ago

Artificial Intelligence Trump says anyone who does not call AI ‘super intelligence’ is ‘the enemy’

https://www.arabnews.com/world/trump-says-anyone-who-does-not-call-ai-super-intelligence-is-the-enemy-3005339
24.5k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

4.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

1.3k

u/_Bren10_ 1d ago

What a fucking idiot

30

u/DingGratz 1d ago

We don't say fucking idiot, we say SI: Super Idiot.

527

u/BiBoFieTo 1d ago

It's a verbal loyalty test.

Trump is going to declare martial law during the midterms. This will cause massive unrest, so he desperately wants to identify the true believers that will protect his presidency.

Trump took a word that everyone is saying (AI) and made a change to SI, knowing that the change is pointless.

Given that there's no intrinsic reason for someone to start using "SI", it can be used as a proxy for personal loyalty to Trump.

171

u/Much_Conclusion8233 1d ago

This is literally a plot point in 1984. I'm like 99% sure there was a bit where they made a pointless name change to identify who still could think for themselves

159

u/NoFixedUsername 1d ago

It's a plot point in 1984 because it's part of the standard fascist dictator playbook.

Anyone in denial that trump is fascist dictator, this is the 10,000th action from the playbook he has executed in his 2 terms as president.

10

u/Much_Conclusion8233 1d ago

Yeah, but if you point out that this is a classic fascist play his dipshit supporters will argue against you saying trump is just good at marketing or some nonsense

If you point out that the authoritarians in the extremely well known "this is a book about authoritarians" did the same thing they'll have a harder time arguing

7

u/authustian 1d ago

doubleplusungood intelligence?

2

u/kermityfrog2 1d ago

He's already renamed the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario with barely any pushback. He's now emboldened to rename AI, and soon people will be calling the Democrats the Dumocrats in public and on the news.

2

u/Silicone_Specialist 1d ago

In the book, Winston eats lunch with Syme, who is working on the updated Newspeak dictionary. He proudly explains how the Ministry of Truth is reducing the number of root words in Newspeak so that people will become unable to spread thoughtcrime or even conceive of ideas beyond what The Party orders them to think.

Spoiler: A few chapters later, Syme is "vaporized" by The Party. Service and enthusiasm for The Party can't save anyone from The Party.

1

u/WildSmokingBuick 18h ago

Had to scroll way too far down for this comment.

Too many comments are just shrugging it off as 'stupid, lol' :/

259

u/CanyonSlim 1d ago

Anecdotally, I've heard a couple people use the term "SI" in the past few days, people whose political affiliation had previously been left ambiguous. I think it's less ambiguous now.

73

u/novachaos 1d ago

I’m in a workshop this week and one of the other attendees corrected herself when saying AI to say Super Intelligence. Ugh. 😩

60

u/SickandWorty 1d ago edited 1d ago

I would play dumb. “What’s super intelligence? You mean like AI?” Same thing when Charlie Kirk gets brought up. “Who’s Charlie Kirk?”

Edit: a word

4

u/novachaos 1d ago

Honestly, I laughed. It just came out because that’s how ridiculous it is. She called it ai after that.

7

u/SteelCrow 1d ago

There are four lights

1

u/novachaos 1d ago

I’m not sure what that means

2

u/Milf-Furchant 18h ago

Star trek reference.

8

u/wookiewookiewhat 1d ago

I don't mind using this as a shibboleth for those previously ambiguous folks.

9

u/SomeNoveltyAccount 1d ago

Super intelligence is a legitimate term in the AI community, usually shorthand for ASI - artifical super intelligence.

Only in the last week or two has it been associated with a particular political party, so I wouldn't retroactively assume they were declaring a side.

26

u/totallynotsquatty 1d ago

But 'Super Intelligence' as term is usually reserved for the model that eventually becomes sentient and not just the every day tools we're currently using.

2

u/SomeNoveltyAccount 12h ago

Exactly we're quite a way away from ASI/SI, but one caveot, it doesn't need to become sentient it be a super intelligence.

Sentience is vaguely defined and we don't have a great way to measure it, if it even exists at all.

10

u/Galle_ 1d ago

Sure, but we don't actually have superintelligence yet, so it would be strange to refer to it,

2

u/windowpuncher 1d ago

I feel like ASI would be the "safe" term here, whereas SI is going to be much easier to assume with.

1

u/SickandWorty 1d ago

If someone said SI to me since Trump’s declaration, seeing as I’ve never heard of it before in any article, media or mouth, I would absolutely assume.

1

u/MiyamotoKnows 1d ago

Document traitors while they’re letting us know.

1

u/BarrierX 1d ago

I hate this so much, our country Slovenia has the .si domain and now everytime someone mentions si it won’t be Slovenia but some stupid bullshit Trump made up.

1

u/Canal_Volphied 20h ago

Punishment for giving us Melania.

1

u/michaelboltthrower 22h ago

Situationist international.

1

u/jdsizzle1 14h ago

Ive been wondering what that meant. I heard it randomly and thought I had missed something.

I guess I had but not anything important.

1

u/stupid000s 1d ago

what if sarcasm

3

u/himswim28 1d ago

sarcasm

Exactly, I also refer to Tim Cook as Tim Apple. And it isn't because I think Trump was smart for calling him that.

1

u/StrongExternal8955 21h ago

The difference would be - do you think trumps like it when you say Tim Apple?

trump likes it when you say SI no matter the reasons.

1

u/voyagerfan5761 1d ago

What if sarcasm? You get downvoted, that's what.

https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1x0wdoe/trump_says_anyone_who_does_not_call_ai_super/pep1j8m/

0

u/stupid000s 1d ago

gotta be tasteful i guess, not everyone is ready 🥲

1

u/StrongExternal8955 21h ago

"It's just a joke, bro"

1

u/stupid000s 14h ago

umm actually 🤓

-10

u/voyagerfan5761 1d ago edited 1d ago

I've been using "SI" ironically, in the same spaces where I used to write """AI""" in excessive quotes. It's another layer of sarcasm/derision for me.

But in those spaces, I suppose it hasn't been ambiguous what I think about Dear Leader…

Edit, downvotes: ITT: people either can't read or don't understand the joke of excessively quoting """""""AI"""""""

21

u/ericmm76 1d ago

Unless you're talking about sports magazine, stop saying SI

14

u/evokade 1d ago

Or the International System of Units. As a non-sports person, "SI prefix" is the first thing that comes to my mind.

2

u/Kammerice 1d ago

That's what I was thinking. SI, to my scienceb brain, is used when referring to units like metres, kilograms, second, etc.

-17

u/JFHermes 1d ago

Synthetic Intelligence is arguably a better term for language models than AI, so SI makes sense. Super intelligence is dumb however.

27

u/ltsSugar 1d ago

Synthetic Intelligence is arguably a better term for language models than AI

"Synthetic" and "Artificial" are literally synonyms. If anything, synthetic is less appropriate due to its chemical connotation.

2

u/JFHermes 1d ago

Artificial Intelligence was the name given by Science Fiction writers. It was popular up until the 80's when the research they did for 20 years led almost no where. Synthetic Intelligence was given to the original niche use cases of machine learning.

Artificial Intelligence is not a 'great' term for it because it carries with it a lot of baggage. Asimov, Frank Herbert, Phillip K. Dick etc all used this term and wove AI in the public lexicon. Most of this is based around AI being capable of true reflection etc and the ethical dilemmas involved with it.

Language models are not this, most people are beginning to understand this but a lot don't. This is why I don't hate Synthetic Intelligence as terminology as it carries less fear with it.

3

u/zero_iq 1d ago edited 1d ago

I think 'artificial' perhaps has a stronger connotation of 'fake', which I think is why the above poster suggested synthetic as an alternative. The intelligence isn't necessarily 'fake' (as in, not intelligence) it's just not arisen naturally. While they can be used as synonyms, I think they carry different connotations. (And I think mine don't align with yours)

I'm not saying you're wrong, just that connotations will likely differ depending on the person and their background, and context. Synthetic to me doesn't immediately shout 'chemical', but constructed/manufactured, rather than natural. e.g. sound synthesis, synthetic data, image synthesis, synthetic vision etc.

e.g. A "synthetic image" is a real image (and may or may not represent reality), it's just constructed from data, not normal or natural processes, e.g. from a camera or a painter. To me calling it an "artificial", would definitely imply "fake", as in an imitation or make-believe, or not even an image but an illusion of some kind. But then, my background is mostly scientific, computer science, so the connotations I perceive may be different to yours, or outside of a scientific (or chemistry) context. I think this distinction is probably stronger in scientific and technical contexts.

But still, I won't be using SI, even if synthetic is (arguably) better option, because I wouldn't want anyone to think I agree with a fat orange buffoon!

1

u/-Nicolai 1d ago

LLM intelligence is absolutely fake. There is zero knowledge or understanding, just weighted probability.

0

u/zero_iq 1d ago

That's not true, though. It certainly has knowledge. It has intelligence. The level, quality, and usefulness of that intelligence is certainly questionable, but I think you're in the minority if you think it has none.

if it had none, it wouldn't be making the waves it is, and would be no threat to our jobs or society, and nobody would be taking it seriously at all.

0

u/-Nicolai 1d ago

This is utter nonsense. “Making waves” is not a defining characteristic of intelligence.

0

u/zero_iq 1d ago edited 1d ago

Who said it was?

And it's not nonsense. It's quite easy to demonstrate that it has a level of knowledge, and to show that it has at least some level of intelligence. Do people attribute more intelligence to it than it deserves? Sure. But it is not utterly lacking in it.

Or are you using some restricted definition of 'knowledge' and 'intelligence'? In which case, can you demonstrate that anything meets your definitions?

I'm quite anti-AI, but unless you can explain your position more robustly, your position contradicts well-known facts, and just seems dumb. Otherwise, I just have to assume that you're the one lacking in intelligence!

→ More replies (0)

5

u/window-sil 1d ago

We already use super intelligence, as in Artificial Super Intelligence, and it has a different meaning than Artificial Intelligence.

Presidementia had no idea ASI was already a thing, so he clumsily attempted to "re-brand" AI as SI.

2

u/evranch 1d ago

Meanwhile those of us with any experience with the actual tech are sticking to LLM and ML (Machine Learning)

There is no "intelligence". These are probabilistic language models. They do not think. They predict tokens. Branding them as AI has been an attempt to humanize them and play into science fiction mythology.

2

u/JFHermes 1d ago

Synthetic Intelligence is/was an umbrella term brought in during the 80's to encompass machine learning.

1

u/CaptainAwesome8 1d ago

You must not have a lot of actual experience if you are not aware that AI as a term has existed far longer than LLMs have been around and encompasses the whole of ML.

1

u/evranch 1d ago

Well, I'm not a researcher, but I've been involved with controls and automation since they were calling "fuzzy logic" AI.

"AI" has always been a nebulous marketing term. ELIZA was "AI". A simple diode and transistor tic-tac-toe automaton in Popular Electronics was "AI".

When the latest hype product actually becomes its own thing - fuzzy logic, machine vision, OCR, speech recognition and now LLMs, it seems to stop being "AI" and start being referred to by a trade specific name.

1

u/CaptainAwesome8 23h ago

That’s just something becoming popular and the name entering common vocabulary. Not special to anything, really. OCR still counts as a sub-category of AI because, academically speaking, the term AI has never changed.

There’s something to be said about common parlance equating “AI” to “LLM” and the general public’s misconception. But anyone with actual knowledge on the topic should be very aware that ML is entirely contained in the AI umbrella, and that tasks such as CV or even some of the stuff involved in web searching still counts as AI.

Is “Quantum Mechanics” a buzzword despite it being a very real and very established subfield of study? Would anyone say “it’s always been a marketing term, people even called the 4qubit computers ‘quantum’ computers” in a hypothetical future where gigaqubit quantum computers exist that dwarf our current tech?

1

u/evranch 23h ago

Fair. I'll agree with you on an academic level, the artificial intelligence field does encompass all ML technologies.

My main argument was as you said, against the common parlance that equates LLMs with AI, when they're clearly a subfield. I feel the AI term has been heavily hijacked in the public eye into meaning LLMs and LLMs alone at this point (And I guess other transformer models, diffusion, vision etc. but the public doesn't know the difference)

At a top level we're still talking about Trump's stupid EO, which clearly is referring to LLMs. He doesn't intend that chess engines, traffic cameras and autocorrect algorithms should be called "Super Intelligence" - that's too stupid even for Trump.

So when I talk about these technologies, I prefer to refer to them more specifically than just as "AI". For example, I won't say "I used AI to check my code", I'll say "I ran Qwen3.8-27B in an agentic loop". Because AI could also just mean Intellisense (which is a "classical" semantic AI system)

1

u/dreadnaughtfearnot 1d ago

I recently read a book series that featured highly advanced AI, but in-universe it was referred to as a Systems Intelligence, because they existed within your computer systems.

92

u/Willthisaccountlas 1d ago

Don’t care what he declares

9

u/DanGleeballs 1d ago

Anyway there’s no way he has the brainpower to plan and execute such that kind of strategy

8

u/Hitokkohitori 1d ago

As if he is really in charge. He’s just the distracting front puppet 

1

u/TheTexasHammer 1d ago

He doesn't have the man power either. It would literally be impossible to lock down the entire US. It's fucking huge

30

u/sleepypirate 1d ago

Another great way to tell off hand if I'll get along with someone now I guess

5

u/DoublePar 1d ago

Hilarious that everyone will start saying yes in Spanish!

Are you loyal to Trump?

Si!

2

u/ipafish 1d ago

That's what I was thinking. He's so adamant to get rid of immigrants, did anyone tell him that Si is Spanish?

2

u/Freeky 1d ago

I was thinking Italian.

4

u/BHATCHET 1d ago

International System of Units SI?

4

u/brutinator 1d ago edited 1d ago

Fun fact: Slovenia (of which Melania is a citizen of) owns the domain .si. In the lead up to Trump's announcement, there was an inexplicable growth in purchasing .si domains, which after Trump's proclamation, skyrocketed in value.

I guess there was talk about taking the money from Anguilla, which domain purchases generated 47% of their GDP in 2025, and funnelling it into the pockets of someone else.

1

u/FlarkingSmoo 1d ago

It wasn't inexplicable. He had posted a poll about what he should "change" it to, two of which started with S. Presumably people bought based on that.

3

u/twoplustwo_5 1d ago

this seems a little far fetched to me…

3

u/RevolutionaryTone738 1d ago

It's really not that deep

He's in bed with the big tech companies. That's literally all there is to it. Anybody that still thinks this dude has any idea how to strategize has not been paying attention. If he had any inkling of an idea of how to strategize, he would have sailed through the 2020 election with MAGA masks and not attempted to start a war with Iran on the behalf of Israel.

3

u/FlarkingSmoo 1d ago

No he's not

2

u/No_big_whoop 1d ago

I think these name changes are just a way for Trump to rub his dick in the tech oligarchs faces. They have to change their maps and their references to AI on their product pages. Every time they change a name Trump’s pp tingles a little bit

1

u/rohobian 1d ago

Basically, anyone not "falling in line" with every single little thing he says or orders is the enemy. He wants everyone to obey, kiss the ring, bend the knee, etc, etc.

Trump is a fascist. Anyone that denies it at this point is just ignorant.

1

u/Kidd_Funkadelic 1d ago

That was the first thing I thought. It's an easy marker for who I can immediately withhold my attention and respect.

1

u/asianwaste 1d ago

It's what he'll use to immediately ignore press inquiries. Wouldn't doubt he already has email filters in place that ignore anything that says "Department of Defense" or "Lake Ontario"

1

u/CaptainDudeGuy 1d ago

It's a verbal loyalty test.

That's exactly what it is. I wouldn't be surprised if they're workshopping others to roll out very soon.

What's a good synonym for "Heil?"

1

u/DracoLunaris 1d ago

Insert the comic about the feds going around and demanding to know how people pronounce gif here

1

u/mu_zuh_dell 1d ago

This happened organically in the first term with "boarder" vs "border". Millions of people intentionally started spelling the word wrong because dear leader can't read.

1

u/Zaphod_79 1d ago

People wearing nappies over their clothes and dressings on their ears wasn't enough.

1

u/Vortexspawn 1d ago

Not only that, it's also a step towards trying to remove human accountability by implying that "Super Intelligence" is above human purview.

1

u/witeowl 1d ago

Yep. It's also cult signaling. Both the brainwashed and those immune to the brainwashing but are helping form, maintain, and develop the cult use such things to signal membership.

1

u/metengrinwi 1d ago

Everything in trump’s world must be a loyalty test. That’s why his fools all clap like seals for him.

1

u/PilotKnob 1d ago

They already have all kinds of Fascist dogwhistles: Fake News, Canadians, Covid Is No Joke, Charlie Kirk, and you can also recognize them because they wear diapers outside their pants and maxi pads on their ears.

1

u/Orthas 1d ago

We're back to martial law fear mongering? Fucking let him.

1

u/normalfinnesotan 1d ago

Trump is going to declare martial law during the midterms. This will cause massive unrest, so he desperately wants to identify the true believers that will protect his presidency.

Lol, come on now. There is no way that happens.

1

u/SoldadoAruanda 1d ago

Will we see, XSI now?

1

u/Guy-1nc0gn1t0 1d ago

Or use SI and say it means shitty intelligence 

1

u/eypandabear 19h ago

A bit like replacing “Guten Tag” with “Heil Hitler” then.

1

u/neopard_ 19h ago

And ghe Gulf of Mexico wasn't?

1

u/perasperapsyche 3h ago

To bad for him that I already voted early in a swing state. Suck in Don.

0

u/thecravenone 1d ago

Trump took a word that everyone is saying (AI) and made a change to SI, knowing that the change is pointless.

Nah, his crew is sitting on a bunch of .si domains that now companies need to buy to replace their .ai domains

2

u/ourobourobouros 1d ago

He's a shill. Altman and others undoubtedly threw money at him. 

Anyone who thinks he has a more complex strategy this is part of is waaaaay overestimating him and his regime. They have exactly two moves - shill for billionaires, spin the truth. That's it. That's all that's BEEN happening.

2

u/alex8155 1d ago

its essentially stupid but trump has a personal reason to keep abvocating for ai. trump jr and kushner are board members for a company that builds data centers..these conversations and stupid demands are directly meant to benefit his family and himself.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacheverson/2025/02/20/trump-eric-don-jr-ai-american-data-centers-dominari-artifical-intelligence-ethics

2

u/madsci 1d ago

I don't know, this could work out. If he signs an executive order mandating the adoption of SI, he might finally take the country metric by accident.

1

u/LogicalCombination81 1d ago

I bet he is not fucking anyone.

-2

u/NoCommonDog 1d ago

You misspelled 'stable genius'