On September 29, 2026, US President Donald J. Trump signed an Executive Order titled "Inaugurating The Era of Super Intelligence," initiating an immediate linguistic and regulatory pivot across the federal government. The directive commands all executive branch departments and agencies to replace the terms "Artificial Intelligence" and "AI" with "Super Intelligence" and "SI" in official correspondence, public communications, websites, reports, and policy documents, according to the official White House announcement.
Under the new mandate, federal agencies are instructed to no longer acknowledge the terms "Artificial Intelligence" or "AI" in applicable future settings. The order does not, however, require agencies to alter previously issued regulations, presidential actions, contracts, grants, or historical documents.
For legal purposes, the terms "Super Intelligence" and "SI" currently refer to technologies covered by the existing statutory definition of artificial intelligence under section 9401(3) of title 15, United States Code. To formalize this shift, the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology has been given 60 days to submit proposed statutory language to define "Super Intelligence" in federal law, as detailed by Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer.
The White House Accord on Super Intelligence
Parallel to the executive order, the administration unveiled the "White House Accord on Super Intelligence," also known as the "Joint Commitment on Frontier Responsibilities." This voluntary agreement was signed by President Trump alongside major technology executives, including Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI President Greg Brockman, xAI CEO Elon Musk, and Nvidia President and CEO Jensen Huang, according to Nextgov.
President Trump described the voluntary agreement as "morally binding" and a framework for "self-policing," as reported by The Guardian. The accord establishes four layers of voluntary controls and audits for advanced models:
- Internal Capability Monitoring: Implementing internal controls to monitor model capabilities and alignment around cybersecurity, biosecurity, and chemical threats.
- Internal Oversight Teams: Empowering dedicated internal teams to oversee these safety controls.
- External Audits: Partnering with independent external auditors to verify safety protocols.
- Board-Level Governance: Designating an independent board-level committee to oversee reports and compliance.
The signing of the accord comes during a period of heightened scrutiny regarding frontier model deployment. For instance, Anthropic recently highlighted these structural vulnerabilities in its S-1 filing, as discussed in the Anthropic IPO analysis. Similarly, security concerns have forced developers to halt certain training runs, such as OpenAI's recent containment challenges.
Technical and Operational Realities
For enterprise developers and global policy analysts, the US government SI rebrand introduces immediate operational questions. While the executive order changes federal terminology, the underlying hardware and safety frameworks remain anchored to existing cloud infrastructures.
Nvidia has already begun deploying specialized safety layers to align with these emerging requirements, including the Nvidia Open Agent Safety Platform, which aims to prevent autonomous agents from bypassing software sandboxes.
The transition to the SI terminology is expected to influence international standards, particularly as global supply chains and safety protocols align with US federal procurement guidelines. The 60-day window for the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology to draft formal statutory language will be critical in determining whether "Super Intelligence" remains a terminological rebranding or if it will introduce stricter threshold metrics for computing power and algorithmic capabilities.
The public release of the accord also drew attention for a clerical error. Directly beneath President Trump's signature, the document identified him as the leader of the "Unites States," according to the Times of India. Despite the typo, federal agencies have already begun the process of auditing their digital assets to comply with the new linguistic standard.
