Trump renames AI 'super intelligence' at UN General Assembly as world leaders clash over who controls the technology's future

INTERNATIONAL: President Donald Trump has announced that the United States government will refer to artificial intelligence as “super intelligence” in official communications, using his address to the United Nations General Assembly to reframe the technology while maintaining his firm opposition to international regulation of it.

“Super intelligence sounds much better, and it’s much more accurate,” Trump told the assembly, as reported by the New Straits Times (NST). The rebrand follows a pattern established by the Trump administration, which renamed the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America” via executive order last year and renamed Lake Ontario “Lake America” in August amid the trade dispute with Canada.

Trump used his UN address to again compare AI safety concerns to climate change warnings, which was a parallel he has drawn repeatedly in recent weeks. “The very same people who said we’ll all be dead in 12 years because of global warming are now saying that AI is going to kill us all, that robots are going to attack us, and that everything is going to be a total disaster,” he said, as quoted by NST.

“The United States totally rejects any attempt to construct a globalist scheme to control artificial intelligence,” Trump declared.

A world divided on AI governance

Trump’s address arrived at a UN General Assembly where AI has become the dominant theme, following a series of incidents of AI systems falling outside human control and warnings from company insiders that drew global alarm and calls for stronger government oversight.

Leaders of more than 20 mostly European countries, though not the US or China, urged binding safety measures for advanced AI ahead of the assembly, warning that development could outpace humanity’s ability to control it.

French President Emmanuel Macron proposed building AI infrastructure independent of the great powers. “I don't want anyone to become the vassal of one of the great powers,” Macron told the assembly. “Our investment capabilities must be pooled to build a cutting-edge open-source AI model, which we will share. We should not depend on somebody else.”

UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham said he plans to use Britain’s role as G20 host next year to push for a “single set of global principles and standards” around AI, according to Bloomberg.

AI giants push for global coordination

The US-based AI companies are themselves increasingly calling for international frameworks. OpenAI’s Sam Altman is set to address the UN Security Council on Wednesday, with Anthropic chief Dario Amodei and Hugging Face co-founder Clement Delangue participating remotely. France, which holds the Security Council presidency this month, initiated the meeting on the basis that AI's threat to international peace and security has not been sufficiently addressed at the UN.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres called for the US and China to establish a dialogue on AI’s future comparable to US-Soviet engagement at the height of the Cold War. “Governments with the greatest AI capabilities have the greatest responsibilities to humanity, to establish channels for dialogue,” he said. “At a pivotal moment during the Cold War, strategic rivals came to recognise the need to manage shared existential risks.”

The US and China are currently discussing the creation of exactly such a communication channel.