Donald Trump is considering drastic steps to ensure people stop saying “artificial intelligence” or “AI” and start using his preferred term “super intelligence” instead.
The president took to his Truth Social platform on Tuesday to complain that The Wall Street Journal keeps using the long-accepted terms AI/artificial intelligence instead of immediately falling in line with his wishes. His post included a decree to eventually ban the term altogether:
Last month, Trump announced his plan to do to AI what he previously did to Lake Ontario and the Gulf of Mexico, and what he is considering doing to New Mexico.
HuffPost reached out to the White House to ask what penalties could be in store for the scofflaws who dare to use “AI” instead of “Super Intelligence,” but no one responded immediately.
Mediaite also reached out to the White House to ask how the government could ban a term, given the existence of the First Amendment.
The White House’s response? “Refer to the truth.”
Earlier this month, University of Toronto computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton – who has been called “the Godfather of A.I.” – told The Guardian that Trump’s obsession with “superintelligence” demonstrates he understands “almost nothing” about AI.
“He’s taken a technical term which has a very clear meaning and then reused it,” Hinton told the publication. “‘Superintelligence’ means ‘smarter than people,’ and has been around for at least 20 years. It’s got a very clear meaning. And now he says we’re going to call AI ‘superintelligence’. You can’t make it smarter than people just by calling it smarter than people.”
In addition, Darrell West, an AI policy researcher at the Brookings Institution, noted to HuffPost earlier this month that “superintelligence” sounds “like ‘The Terminator,’” and he “doesn’t think changing the word is going to lead to greater reassurance.”
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