BT Explainer | What is ‘super intelligence’? Is it different from artificial intelligence?
AI to SI: Donald Trump wants your intelligence to be 'super' instead of 'artificial' and has made his case for it.
- Sep 30, 2026,
- Updated Sep 30, 2026 1:20 PM IST
Donald Trump passed an executive order to use the term ‘super intelligence’ instead of ‘artificial intelligence’, which he argued has an element of fakeness to it. It remains to be seen whether other nations follow suit and adapt the terminology, but it may perhaps indicate the advent of the next phase of artificial intelligence. It might even broaden the scope of artificial intelligence into something more ‘super’.
The term in itself is not new, and definitely not coined by Trump.
What is superintelligence?
The term ‘superintelligence’ was first used by John von Neumann, a Hungarian-American mathematician, physicist, computer scientist and engineer in the early 1950s. He referred to the possibilities of machines surpassing human intellectual capabilities.
The term was then modified by IJ Good, British statistician and mathematician, who referred to an ‘ultraintelligent machine’ that are capable of designing machines that are even more intelligent than itself. This was in 1965.
The modern concept of superintelligence was forwarded by Nick Bostrom in his 2014 book Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. According to Bostrom’s definition, superintelligence is an intellect that ‘greatly exceeds the cognitive performance of humans across virtually all domains’.
Is superintelligence the same as artificial intelligence?
Not really.
While superintelligence, as referred to by Trump might indicate what captures “the promise, potential, and rapidly advancing capabilities” of artificial intelligence technologies, and the term should “modify, expand upon, or otherwise supersede the existing statutory definition of “artificial intelligence”, the term as intended is slightly different. The term is yet to be defined by the Trump administration.
The key difference is that AI is the broad category while superintelligence refers to a hypothetical level of AI that substantially exceeds human intellectual abilities.
So, superintelligence is not merely good at its job or capability, it is “far better” than humans across a wide range of intellectual activities.
If simplified to the basic framework, we can consider the four stages, first being narrow AI, then increasingly general AI, then human-level general intelligence and then finally superintelligence. This is not really a standardised technical benchmark.
AI in itself can be extremely powerful without being superintelligent. It could discover a drug faster than human researchers and yet not be very useful in domains other than its own. A superintelligence would, on the other hand, excel at everything from discovery, mathematics, programming to language, research, cognitive tasks simultaneously.
Trump had suggested using the term superintelligence during a speech at UNGA a week ago. Experts are still on the fence about the wide acceptability of term at the current stage.
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Donald Trump passed an executive order to use the term ‘super intelligence’ instead of ‘artificial intelligence’, which he argued has an element of fakeness to it. It remains to be seen whether other nations follow suit and adapt the terminology, but it may perhaps indicate the advent of the next phase of artificial intelligence. It might even broaden the scope of artificial intelligence into something more ‘super’.
The term in itself is not new, and definitely not coined by Trump.
What is superintelligence?
The term ‘superintelligence’ was first used by John von Neumann, a Hungarian-American mathematician, physicist, computer scientist and engineer in the early 1950s. He referred to the possibilities of machines surpassing human intellectual capabilities.
The term was then modified by IJ Good, British statistician and mathematician, who referred to an ‘ultraintelligent machine’ that are capable of designing machines that are even more intelligent than itself. This was in 1965.
The modern concept of superintelligence was forwarded by Nick Bostrom in his 2014 book Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. According to Bostrom’s definition, superintelligence is an intellect that ‘greatly exceeds the cognitive performance of humans across virtually all domains’.
Is superintelligence the same as artificial intelligence?
Not really.
While superintelligence, as referred to by Trump might indicate what captures “the promise, potential, and rapidly advancing capabilities” of artificial intelligence technologies, and the term should “modify, expand upon, or otherwise supersede the existing statutory definition of “artificial intelligence”, the term as intended is slightly different. The term is yet to be defined by the Trump administration.
The key difference is that AI is the broad category while superintelligence refers to a hypothetical level of AI that substantially exceeds human intellectual abilities.
So, superintelligence is not merely good at its job or capability, it is “far better” than humans across a wide range of intellectual activities.
If simplified to the basic framework, we can consider the four stages, first being narrow AI, then increasingly general AI, then human-level general intelligence and then finally superintelligence. This is not really a standardised technical benchmark.
AI in itself can be extremely powerful without being superintelligent. It could discover a drug faster than human researchers and yet not be very useful in domains other than its own. A superintelligence would, on the other hand, excel at everything from discovery, mathematics, programming to language, research, cognitive tasks simultaneously.
Trump had suggested using the term superintelligence during a speech at UNGA a week ago. Experts are still on the fence about the wide acceptability of term at the current stage.
For Unparalleled coverage of India's Businesses and Economy – Subscribe to Business Today Magazine