Trump suggests rebranding AI with a new name, says he’s also creating an AI Force

President Donald Trump spent Saturday renaming the technology itself. In a post on his Truth Social network, he wrote that “many people think that the words ‘Artificial Intelligence’ are inaccurate, and very ineloquent,” and then put up a poll asking followers to pick a new name for AI.

The poll offered three options: Superior Intelligence, Extreme Intelligence, or Supreme Intelligence. As of TechCrunch’s publication time, the vote was still running.

A couple of hours later, Trump followed up with another post that grouped attempts at “the decimation, or destruction, of AI” among what he called “many” Democratic hoaxes, alongside a list of other examples he has used before, including “Global Warming” and the two impeachment fights.

The president said he “will not stand by and let this happen,” arguing that the campaign “began with an attack on our Data Centers” until people realized how “wealthy and prestigious” those facilities were for their communities, and that critics are now “going straight at AI” after the data center fight “has largely failed.” TechCrunch noted that he offered no evidence that public suspicion of AI and data centers is anything other than organic, and that both Republicans and Democrats have targeted data centers — New York recently became the first state to halt permits for large projects.

Trump also said he would “cherish” the AI industry, “help it, and watch over it, as it grows,” while announcing that he is forming an “AI Force,” which he compared to the Space Force he established in his first term. He added that he would be announcing the AI “Czar” “in the near future,” with the caveat that “Only High I.Q. individuals need apply.” He did not say what the AI Force or the czar would actually do. Venture capitalist David Sacks stepped down as Trump’s AI and crypto czar earlier this year and now co-chairs the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Putting an AI Force and an AI czar side by side pushes the technology out of pure industrial policy and into the machinery of national security and government building.

The remarks extend comments Trump made at a golf tournament the weekend before, when he said he was open to “guardrails” but argued that too many “negative forces” were raising the issue. The AI safety debate has intensified in recent weeks: an AI researcher said he was quitting Anthropic over concerns that leading labs “earnestly believe it could kill us all by the end of the decade,” after which Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published a plan to “pace the frontier” that appeared to be endorsed by OpenAI’s Sam Altman and SpaceX’s Elon Musk. Critics argue that existential framing distracts from more immediate harms.

The industry echoed him quickly. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, called on stage by Trump at the All-In Summit, agreed that the AI backlash is a “hoax” and insisted “we’re not going to let” a slowdown happen.

What to watch next is whether the AI Force and the AI czar amount to more than a slogan. No budget, agency or regulatory authority has been described so far, while bipartisan pressure on data centers and AI continues at the state level.