“Super intelligence” is senseless idiocy
President Trump says that from this point forward, artificial intelligence will be known as super intelligence. He has issued an executive order to that end.
I have a great deal of experience with attempts to rename technology. As analysts, we often tried to name new things so that people would give us credit for identifying them.
It rarely worked. Forrester invented the term “client-server computing,” which stuck. But it also invented terms for search engines, digital video recorders, and many other categories. Nearly all of those terms are forgotten.
The people who invent things usually invent the category names. And those names usually stick. Outside attempts to name those things don’t.
Can the president succeed at this?
There are about 75 billion words posted online in articles and pages about artificial intelligence. It’s the hottest discussion topic in the world.
The terminology is entrenched in billions of minds.
One person, even the “leader of the free world,” can’t change this. It is like standing before a tsunami with your hand up and shouting “stop.”
And it distracts from the real issues — moral, environmental, political, and existential — that every individual, every company, and every nation must deal with on the topic.
“S.I.” says more about Trump than it does about AI. He’s living in a dream world. That’s won’t solve anything.
It is just another grift. .ai domain names are largely taken but turns out .si (slovenia) domain names were easily had and it won’t surprise you the Trump family is making a quick buck there. It is also a clumsy and doomed attempt to defuse the still growing ill will towards AI. AI technology has promise but is too often being used to further the ends of the privileged at the expense of the rest of society. Trying to call it something else will not change that and as you observe likely won’t succeed in changing what people call it or how they feel about it.
tRump is in the pockets of the Silicon Valley billionaires who are trying to destroy democracy in the U.S. The Senate hearing on AI yesterday concluded that AI must be regulated. It is already the main tool responsible for the “Enshittification” of everything we buy and use (take a look at Cory Doctorow’s writings). AI is responsible for companies’ ability to charge different rates for the SAME PRODUCTS at MacDonalds or at your grocery store, based on your address and the data they have on you scraped by AI and Elon Musk and DOGE. Calling it SI is just another attempt to obfuscate and confuse consumers who have become hopelessly dependent on their cell phones to survive. And they collect EVERYTHING you put on your cell phone and in the “Cloud.” And they control most of the information most people are seeing these days. And “they” are the Silicon Valley oligarchs. AI is their most powerful weapon against democracy, and they are losing control over it. This is serious.
I think that Aerosmith has this covered…
Dream on, dream on, dream on
Dream until your dream come true
Dream on, dream on, dream on
Dream until your dream come true
I think it’s just a marketing trick