Trump Discovers The Term 'Super Intelligence.' It Already Meant Something. Of Course It Did.
President Trump has adopted the term artificial super intelligence, or ASI, which is an existing term of art that predates his usage by over a decade. Philosopher Nick Bostrom popularized the concept in his 2014 bestseller Superintelligence. ASI sits a step beyond AGI, which OpenAI defines as highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work. By that definition, today's AI is not even AGI yet, much less ASI, since you cannot yet hire AI as a reliable virtual employee. Trump and Chinese president Xi Jinping are slated to meet this week to discuss trade and AI issues.
What this teaches you is the concept of definitional drift in policy discourse. The mechanism is that when politicians adopt technical terms, the terms lose precision and gain rhetorical weight. ASI has a specific meaning in the literature. It refers to intelligence that exceeds human capability across virtually all domains. When a president uses it loosely, the term becomes a political signal rather than a technical claim. The lesson is to always ask whether someone is using a term precisely or strategically. The answer is almost always strategically.
President Trump is rebranding AI with the term super intelligence ahead of meetings with Chinese president Xi Jinping on trade and AI. OpenAI, which defines AGI and recently announced a solution to the Navier-Stokes Millennium Prize problem, one of the most important open problems in math, is also relevant here. Nick Bostrom wrote the book. He did not ask for this.
- Search for Nick Bostrom's definition of superintelligence online. Read the first result. This takes three minutes and gives you the actual technical definition before it gets diluted further.
- Ask ChatGPT or Claude to define AGI, then ASI, then explain the difference between the two. Note where the model draws the line. This is the distinction politicians are currently blurring.
- Find one recent news article using the term AI, AGI, or ASI and ask yourself whether the author is using the term precisely or as a buzzword. Congratulations. You are now doing what most policy reporters apparently cannot.