AI TRENDS | Musk and Zuckerberg Adopt U.S. President Donald Trump's “Superintelligence” Term as Other Tech CEOs Stick With AI

Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg used “superintelligence,” a term promoted by U.S. President Donald Trump, on earnings calls, while executives at Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet continued to say “AI.” According to Sina Finance, Trump signed a directive on September 29 requiring U.S. executive-branch departments and agencies to use “superintelligence” instead of “artificial intelligence”; this week, he called on Truth Social for “AI” to be barred from all relevant documents and other materials. At last week’s earnings calls, Tesla and SpaceX adopted the term. Musk said at Tesla that some humanoid robots looked impressive but used neither advanced AI nor superintelligence; in early October, he had renamed the rocket company’s AI division SpaceXSI. At Meta’s October 21 earnings call, Zuckerberg emphasized the company’s goal of “providing personal superintelligence to everyone.” Meta had established its Superintelligence Labs the previous year. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy repeatedly used “AI,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella described AI as one of the company’s three key priorities, and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said AI investment was driving usage and overall user growth. In other communications, Microsoft’s annual report to shareholders used “superintelligence” eight times. IBM CEO Arvind Krishna used both “SI” and “AI,” while Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan said superintelligence was behind unprecedented demand amid chip supply constraints. Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora called a White House meeting on superintelligence a milestone, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang praised the White House Superintelligence Accord.