Trump Declares AI Renamed 'Super Intelligence' as Poll Numbers Sink

President Donald Trump said Tuesday he signed a document purporting to "officially" change the name of artificial intelligence to "superintelligence," staging a forced rebrand of an industry he has tightly embraced even as Americans grow increasingly worried about the technology's rapid advance.

Speaking to reporters on the White House grounds while flanked by tech executives, Trump suggested the document had been signed by the leaders of a slew of AI and tech giants who had gathered there for a luncheon with the president.

"We've changed the name officially today," Trump said. "The name has been officially changed by the biggest, the smartest, the greatest people anywhere in the world."

Asked if the document was binding in any way, Trump said it is "morally binding."

Specifics about the document were unclear. The White House did not immediately respond to CNBC's requests for additional information. Trump had not been initially expected to appear at the unusual press gathering outside the West Wing.

The name change did not come from nowhere. Trump crowdsourced it last week, asking his social media followers in a poll whether they preferred "SUPER INTELLIGENCE" or "SUPERIOR INTELLIGENCE."

It is the latest attempted rebrand from a president who has focused intently on naming and branding throughout his careers in business and politics. During the latest flare-up in U.S. relations with Canada last month, Trump signed an executive order asserting that Lake Ontario would be renamed "Lake America." Right after taking office last year, he signed an order renaming the Gulf of Mexico the "Gulf of America."

A "statement of principles" behind the spectacle

Beneath the branding theater, Tuesday's event had a policy substance of its own. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who attended the luncheon, told reporters before Trump appeared that attendees had signed a "statement of principles" titled "The White House Accord on Superintelligence: A Joint Commitment on Frontier SI Responsibilities."

Summarizing the document, Johnson said it includes "voluntary" commitments "on behalf of the industry," as well as "robust internal controls" and "layers of internal and external review."

"Safety and innovation are not mutually exclusive pursuits," Johnson said.

But Trump's own answer on safety was less structured. Asked why people should not be concerned about AI and why there should not be government-mandated safety guardrails, he said: "Because we have people that love our country and love the world a lot."

Trump also shrugged when asked whether his support for AI and data centers could hurt Republicans in the upcoming midterm election.

"I just have to do what's right," he said.

Johnson said GOP incumbents agree that the U.S. cannot lose its edge over China in the race for AI dominance — the strategic framing the industry has used to argue for lighter regulation and faster buildouts.

The polling problem

The rebrand lands at a moment of clear political vulnerability for the president on this issue. Recent polls show majorities of Americans expressing fear and concern about AI and disapproving of Trump's handling of it.

A Quinnipiac University poll released earlier Tuesday afternoon found just 25% of respondents approve of the president's handling of AI, versus 58% who disapprove. That is a lower approval rating than Trump scored on the Iran war (28%), the economy (31%) and U.S.-China policy (34%) in the same poll. The survey was conducted Sept. 24 to Sept. 27 and carries a margin of error of 3.8 percentage points.

For an administration that has staked much of its economic and geopolitical strategy on AI dominance — and for the tech executives standing beside Trump on Tuesday — that gap between elite enthusiasm and public anxiety is a growing liability heading into the midterms.

Critics: renaming does nothing about the risks

Sen. Mark R. Warner, D-Va., vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, called Trump unserious about the risks AI poses.

"The companies building the most powerful AI systems are warning us that the technology is advancing faster than our safeguards. The president's response? To rename it and tell the companies developing it to regulate themselves," Warner said in a statement. "But changing what we call artificial intelligence does nothing to address the very real risks that come with increasingly powerful AI systems."

Warner's statement points to the central tension of Tuesday's event: the industry's own frontier labs have publicly warned about risks from increasingly capable systems, while the policy vehicle announced at the White House rests on voluntary commitments and self-review rather than enforceable mandates.

With the "White House Accord on Superintelligence" now framed as a joint industry commitment, and midterm elections approaching against polling that shows AI as one of Trump's weakest issues, the question now is whether voluntary principles and a new name can hold up as the substance of U.S. AI policy.