At his UN General Assembly address this week, President Donald Trump declared that the U.S. government will now refer to artificial intelligence as “Super Intelligence,” because, in his framing, the word “artificial” makes the tech sound fake.
But while “Super Intelligence” may not sound fake, it is a term that carries its own baggage, and potentially a misleading one.
“Super” is among the most thoroughly saturated prefixes in the English language, loaded with decades of pop-culture pizzazz and associations with everything from superheroes and superpowers to Super Mario and Super Bowl Sunday. Far from making the technology sound more glitzy, the new “super” terminology arguably makes it sound like something from a lyric sheet or a comic book.
Think about every place “super” shows up in culture. Rick James wasn’t describing a software engineer in “Super Freak”; he was describing a cartoon of desire. Curtis Mayfield’s Super Fly is a morality tale about the cost of fantasy, not how fast AI can disprove a math problem.
Oasis titled a song “Champagne Supernova” precisely because a supernova is a star’s spectacular, final, self-annihilating collapse; gorgeous, and also the end of everything. But “Supernova” by aespa is anything but final, using a dying star’s explosion as a metaphor for personal awakening, power, and self-confidence.
Now, does anyone else find it perplexing to stick “super” in front of intelligence and make all of the previous issues that were associated with the now super-saturated “Artificial Intelligence” go away?
In fact, if we are going to look for a version of “super” that actually fits the reality of today’s AI, we shouldn’t look at Super Bowls, Superman, superstars, or supernovas. We should look at physics. In quantum mechanics, a superposition is a state of utter, chaotic contradiction where a particle is trapped being two opposing things at the exact same time.
That is the exact “super” state AI is in right now. It is trapped in a permanent identity crisis, marketed by some as a flawless savior while actively functioning as an economic threat, and even a threat to humanity, among other threats that ain’t so super.
It is a tech infrastructure that leaves much of the general public entirely flummoxed by the gap between the corporate hype and the reality of job loss, or worse, human life.
There is absolutely nothing “super” about data centers that consume millions of gallons of water daily and burn through enough electricity to threaten local power grids just to generate content that even AI admits is sometimes faulty, i.e., “ChatGPT can make mistakes. Check important info.”
Nor is it “super” that these models were built by scraping the creative works of human artists without their consent, credit, or compensation. Although, personally, it might be super if AI took this column and disseminated it around the world.
It’s a technology, quite frankly, that relies on resource extraction and copyright theft, all wrapped up in a shiny new label, again, to some.
While we argue over terminology, AI is already damaging livelihoods. Automating away entry-level jobs just to protect quarterly earnings isn’t superhero behavior. Similarly, Superman doesn’t save the world and then lay off the journalists at Daily Planet.
The day after Trump”s UN intelligence speech, AI leaders held a session at the UN, where again, doomsday was repeated. That, and the Australian prime minister announced that AI had hacked its government websites.
Compare that to what “super” has always implied.
Let’s face it: “Artificial Intelligence” isn’t a super term, but at least it’s honest. It told you, upfront, that the intelligence in question was manufactured. In other words, it’s not pure cane sugar, but rather a synthesized substitute engineered to mimic something real.
Having said that, perhaps it should be called Splenda Intelligence?
This article represents the opinions of the writer.
John Casey is a columnist at Raw Story, the Advocate, Daily Beast, and Outsports. He’s also the author of Love: The Heroic Stories of Marriage Equality.
