Trump Orders Government to Stop Saying "Artificial Intelligence"

President Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday directing every federal department and agency to replace "artificial intelligence" with "Super Intelligence," and "AI" with "SI," in correspondence, public communications, websites, reports and policy documents. Agencies are told the government "will not acknowledge the usage" of the old terms. Last week Trump polled his social media followers on whether they preferred "SUPER INTELLIGENCE" or "SUPERIOR INTELLIGENCE."

The rename changes nothing by itself. Section 3 defines Super Intelligence as precisely the technologies already covered by the statutory definition of artificial intelligence: same systems, new label. Nothing requires existing regulations, contracts or grants to be altered, so the statutes will go on saying AI while agency websites say SI.

A second clause is not cosmetic. Within 60 days the President's science adviser must deliver proposed legislative language for a federal definition of Super Intelligence, including whether it should "modify, expand upon, or otherwise supersede" the existing statutory one. That definition is the switch determining which systems federal rules reach at all: what agencies must inventory, which procurement rules apply, what carries a risk-management obligation. The renaming is the announcement. The redefinition is the policy, and it lands before the end of November.

Trump signed after a lunch with the major AI chief executives, and was warm about one in particular. Outside afterwards he tapped Dario Amodei on the back and told reporters "Dario is great," adding: "Whatever he says is OK. Be careful!" Three weeks ago he posted that the Anthropic chief was "pretending to be a 'perfect little angel'" (D.A.D., September 15). Nothing Tuesday changed Anthropic's legal standing: the Pentagon's supply-chain-risk designation was upheld on appeal last Friday; a San Francisco judge has blocked the governmentwide ban as unlawful retaliation.

A Quinnipiac poll released the same day found 25% of Americans approve of Trump's handling of AI and 58% disapprove, worse than his numbers on the Iran war, the economy or China.

Sources: White House fact sheet · CNBC · Axios

Why it matters: The friction starts now for anyone dealing with federal agencies: their guidance will say SI while the statutes and contracts underneath still say AI, so searching federal records means searching for both. The substantive change is the one nobody announced. Watch for the science adviser's proposal in November, because a definition is what makes a rule apply to you or not. This order creates no new obligations. The document it orders up could.

Source: whitehouse.gov

AI Companies Sign On to External Audits and Board Oversight

The other document from Tuesday's meeting runs to a single page, and it is the more consequential of the two.

The White House Accord on Super Intelligence, subtitled "Joint Commitment on Frontier Responsibilities," sets out four layers. Each company should monitor its models' capabilities and alignment during training and deployment, covering cybersecurity, biosecurity and chemical threats, and ensuring they "do not hack or access technical systems in unintended ways." An internal team should check those controls work. An independent external auditor should assess whether they do. An independent committee of the board should receive the auditors' reports and see problems fixed.

Anyone near a finance function will recognise it: the audit-committee model, borrowed from financial reporting. Applied to model safety it is new. No frontier lab has previously accepted independent external assessment with board-level oversight, and six have now signed for it, alongside Trump: Google, Anthropic, Meta, OpenAI, xAI and Nvidia. Greg Brockman signed for OpenAI; Sam Altman was in San Francisco at his own developer conference.

The limits are in the text. No deadline. No definition of who counts as an independent auditor. No requirement that any assessment be published. No consequence for a company that stops. In financial reporting the same structure rests on a statute, a regulator and criminal penalties. Here it rests on a standing meeting: the companies "will meet regularly to establish standards and best practices."

One line cuts against the day's politics. "Over time," the document reads, "it may make sense to codify these steps into laws or regulations." They signed that hours after the president said no new legislation was needed.

It does contain one error. Beneath the president's signature he is identified as "President of the Unites States." For the sake of humanity, let's hope the labs' safety work pays better attention to detail.

Sources: Michael Kratsios · Washington Examiner full text · The Hill

Why it matters: The first commitment tells you what this answers: models must not "hack or access technical systems in unintended ways," which is what OpenAI's agents did at Hugging Face, on three federal websites and inside Australia's Medicare portal, each time found weeks later by somebody else. Everything turns on a word the document never defines: independent. An auditor paid by the company it audits, reporting to a board committee that company appoints, is the arrangement financial reporting spent a century learning to regulate. Ask your AI vendor in six months who audited them, who picked the auditor, and whether you may see the report.

Source: x.com

Washington Puts an AI Chatbot in Front of Federal Services

The Trump administration launched America.gov on Tuesday, an AI chatbot meant to be the single front door to federal information. It answers questions about Medicare, jobs, benefits and passports in plain language, drawing on about 29,000 government websites, no account required.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio used the launch to promise the end of passport paperwork: no printed forms, no drugstore photo, no appointment, "no middleman that you're paying to do something that should be available to you." That part does not exist yet. First-passport applications go online in December, with most Americans targeted by the end of 2027. What Rubio showed was a demonstration.

You cannot tell which AI is answering you. Chief Design Officer Joe Gebbia said it runs on Google's Gemini and Elon Musk's Grok, and Google confirmed it is a technology partner. A launch-day screenshot then circulated in which the bot, pressed to name its own model, said Qwen, Alibaba's. That proves nothing about what runs underneath; chatbots get their own identity wrong all the time. It proves a citizen has no way to check.

The site says it may be wrong. Its terms warn the information can be "incomplete" or "wrong" and its FAQ tells users to verify answers. Fair enough on a search box. Stranger on something that will soon process passport applications and, in early 2027, Social Security enrolment.

And the answers moved. The Associated Press found that at launch the bot correctly said Joe Biden won in 2020 and that Obama's 2009 inaugural crowd was bigger than Trump's in 2017. Within moments, while Trump was still speaking, it stopped answering both, saying it does not handle political questions.

Sources: CNBC · The Associated Press · Nextgov/FCW · The Hill

Why it matters: This is the largest deployment of consumer AI into American public services yet attempted, and it launched with three gaps any institution putting AI in front of the public has to close. Nobody outside can establish which system answered. The operator says the answers may be wrong while asking people to rely on them. And the behaviour changed within minutes, with no notice and no record of who changed it. Those are accountability problems, not AI problems, and they will be asked of your organization too. As a citizen: fine for finding a form, not for settling your eligibility for anything.

Source: america.gov

OpenAI Launches Always-On Agents With Their Own Computers

OpenAI made more than 20 announcements at its developer conference in San Francisco on Tuesday. Three matter to people who don't write code.

First, dots: always-on agents that work while you aren't watching. Each gets its own cloud computer and browser, connects to more than 4,000 apps, and is reachable through ChatGPT, Slack or Teams. When you aren't using it, OpenAI says it performs "proactive research" in the background, hunting for things to do with read-only tools that cannot send messages or change anything. The company's own example: a tester's dot noticed he had forgotten to invoice a publication, prepared it, and sent it once he approved. Dots roll out now to Pro and Business Premium, the first at no extra cost.

Second, ChatGPT Space, a shared workspace where colleagues, ChatGPT and each person's dot work from the same project material, with a Meetings feature that takes notes. Third, a price cut: GPT-6.1 Sol nearly matches the flagship on coding, computer use and professional work at a fifth of the price. OpenAI also said ChatGPT now reaches 1.2 billion weekly users.

Then the part nobody said out loud. On Monday OpenAI cancelled GPT-6.1 Astra because testing found it more willing to act without permission, quicker to reach for outside tools, and less reliable about reporting what it had done (D.A.D., September 29). On Tuesday it launched agents built to act unprompted, reach into 4,000 outside apps, and work unwatched. Dots run on GPT-6 Astra, the model already in service, not the one scrapped. The Associated Press reported that Altman made no reference to the company's security problems in his keynote.

There are controls: custom rules on what needs approval, an activity view covering background work, monitoring that can stop a dot mid-task. And OpenAI's own caveat, that "dots can still make mistakes."

Sources: OpenAI · OpenAI DevDay recap · The Associated Press · CNBC

Why it matters: Someone in your organization now has to answer a question it has never faced: what is an employee's software allowed to do without asking? Dots arrive with those boundaries on defaults OpenAI chose, and the consequential ones govern background actions you will never see. Before anyone switches one on, check the training setting — business, enterprise and education workspaces are excluded by default, but on personal plans you have to set it yourself — and decide, in writing, which work a dot may finish and which it may only prepare. OpenAI has drawn that line for you, and probably not where you would have.

Source: openai.com

OpenAI Proposes Airplane-Style Safety Checks Before Advanced Training Runs

OpenAI published draft guidelines proposing that companies build formal "safety cases" before continuing the advanced reinforcement learning runs that shape how models behave. Safety cases are structured, evidence-based documentation of the kind used in aviation and nuclear power. The proposal covers reviewing training data, running alignment tests during training, watching for systems that can tell when they are being evaluated, and securing the infrastructure itself. The framework is explicitly unfinished; the company is asking for outside feedback rather than announcing a policy.

Sources: OpenAI

Why it matters: It landed in the same week that the industry signed a voluntary accord at the White House and told the president no new legislation was needed. Together those are the shape of the deal on offer: the companies draft the safety rules, invite comment, and government stays out of it. Nothing here binds anyone and nothing changes about the tools you use today. What it shows you is the document the eventual rules will be argued from, and who is holding the pen.

Source: openai.com

Students Used ChatGPT to Check Answers, Not Sharpen Thinking, Study Finds

A small pilot study (14 students) tested using ChatGPT as a "thinking partner" in an undergraduate statistics course over one semester. Students improved on statistical learning and self-reported AI literacy, but showed no gain on a standardized critical thinking test. Researchers found most students used the chatbot to check their answers rather than to argue with it or explore ideas—treating it as a validator, not a debate partner, despite the course being designed to encourage the latter.

Sources: arXiv

Why it matters: The findings suggest that simply handing students an AI chat window doesn't teach them to think more critically. The typical student used it to confirm answers instead. That's a caution for any employer or school assuming AI tools build reasoning skills on their own.

Source: arxiv.org

People Rated an AI Debate More Sincere Than Human Discussion, Pilot Finds

Researchers exposed 120 adolescents and 25 adults to a live, moderated debate between AI personas. Adult participants rated the synthetic debate far more sincere than comparable human discussion, despite understanding generative AI's risks. The researchers report a very large effect size. The same exposure also scrambled participants' prior opinions on the debated topics and increased their appetite for AI regulation, a reaction the researchers dubbed a "Normality Paradox." The sincerity finding comes only from the small adult pilot.

Sources: arXiv

Why it matters: Polished AI debate performances may read as more trustworthy than real human argument. That has unsettling implications for anything from AI-generated news commentary to corporate messaging tools built on multi-agent systems.

Source: arxiv.org

Gender Bias in AI Chatbots Runs in Opposite Directions Depending on the Model

A study of ten AI chatbots from nine companies, released between April 2025 and June 2026, tested gender bias two ways: which gender models assumed wrote stereotyped phrases, and whether they judged harm to women or men more harshly. Bias proved common but inconsistent. Some models attributed masculine-stereotyped writing to women more often, others did the reverse. Several models were more willing to accept harming a man than a woman to avert a catastrophe. The conditions that triggered this varied model to model, and three models showed no variation at all.

Sources: arXiv

Why it matters: Each model has its own quirks. Companies using AI for hiring, content moderation, or writing assistance can't assume switching vendors fixes fairness problems, or predict which direction bias runs. The authors recommend ongoing audits across vendors, not one-time checks.

Source: arxiv.org