WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump has announced that the use of the English term "Artificial Intelligence (AI)" will soon be officially banned "in all relevant documents, and everything else, due to its inaccuracy," he wrote on his online platform Truth Social.
Trump is escalating his campaign against the established term artificial intelligence, which he wants to replace with "superintelligence." For weeks, he has been trying to establish that term instead of AI.
He has argued that the word "artificial" in the term made the technology appear "fake." He also announced that the White House would regard anyone who still used the term AI as an enemy.
While US media still mainly refer to artificial intelligence, several tech company chief executives have already switched and publicly used the term "superintelligence," which Trump favours.
Trump also rejected international calls to contain AI's powers, amid warnings of growing dangers that could be hard to control.
"The United States also totally rejects any attempt to construct a globalist scheme to control for the artificial intelligence being spoken of so much now," the president said.
He reiterated his commitment to accelerating AI development, and dismissed the growing warnings about the existential risks posed by the technology.
That comes after autonomous hacking attacks carried out by AI software. Leading laboratories such as Anthropic and OpenAI – the developer of ChatGPT then called for a slowdown in the development of artificial intelligence, amid a risk that the technology could slip beyond human control.
Some researchers in the sector also warn that AI could, under certain circumstances, wipe out humanity, though such scenarios are controversial.
David Litt, a former senior speechwriter for former US president Barack Obama, criticised the White House's move.
"Our shared language around artificial intelligence already places far too much emphasis on intelligence, and far too little on artifice," he wrote in Time magazine.
"We default to describing AI using the language of beings, rather than the language of things."
In further concerns, there is a growing movement in the US against the construction of the huge data centres needed to power AI, partly because the facilities drive up the cost of electricity and water. – dpa
