“When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less,” said Humpty Dumpty in Lewis Carroll’s novel Through the Looking-Glass.
Given the classic book is these days pitched at those with a reading age of eight to 12 years, it’s not clear whether Donald Trump has read it, but he’s certainly on board with its sentiment. Having now apparently tired of naming roads, airports and art centres after himself and rebranding gulfs and lakes “America”, the president has now taken to just randomly renaming things.
Trump has signed an executive order to rename artificial intelligence ‘super intelligence’ because it “sounds much better”, directing federal departments and agencies to use the new name and saying the executive branch would no longer “acknowledge the usage of ‘artificial intelligence’ and ‘AI’ in any applicable setting”.
The move follows both a meeting of AI – sorry, SI – executives convened by Trump earlier this week and the launch of an “amazing” new AI government website, america.gov, for tasks like applying for a passport or federal benefits (one of the first people Trump thanked for creating it was Elon Musk, confirming the return of the world’s richest man to the heart of power).
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“I guess that’s really quite an announcement, but the name has been officially changed by the biggest, the smartest, the greatest people anywhere in the world that… and I was with President Xi a few days ago and he would admit, he said ‘these are the smartest people in the world at what they do’ and it’s a big thing but it’s been officially changed to super intelligence or SI,” rambled Trump in a typically chaotic press conference following his tech bro love-in.
“Remember this: whoever wins SI, ‘cause now we’re calling it again super, we’re using the word super, because the other word is a fake word, it’s just, it’s not a… it’s not an appropriate word, whoever wins SI is going to win.”
But surely nobody is sucking up enough to Trump to use his made-up new name and make themselves look silly in the process?
Of course they are! First up at the conference was House speaker and chief Trump lackey Mike Johnson, who would have gone along with it even had the president just renamed AI after the title character from 1950s sitcom Leave It to Beaver.
“The super intelligence companies ensure the safety of the products that they are producing,” he said unconvincingly. “They are fiercely dedicated to that… the super intelligence providers are committed to building trust as they help us build the future.”
And here’s Musk himself, speaking at the same press conference: “I think it’s worth highlighting the positive benefits of AI, which will…. SI, pardon me. Super intelligence. I think by far the most likely outcome is an age of abundance, where we don’t just have universal basic income, we have universal high income.” Best of luck with that!
Still, at least there’s some good news for US voters in the midterm elections worried about new data centres coming to town, making loud noises and drinking all the water: Trump has promised them a ‘dividend’.
“The people are gonna benefit directly, whether it’s teachers who are gonna get paid a bonus, whether it’s people who live in the community that get paid a dividend, you could call it a dividend because dividend sounds right, they are going to greatly benefit by what’s happening,” he said.
It is, of course, only weeks since Trump announced his absurd plan to give every American adult a $5000 cheque as long as the Republicans triumph in November’s midterm elections – dubbed then “the Trump dividend”. And no one expects to see that either.
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