Trump asks followers to vote on new name for AI

US President Donald Trump on Saturday launched an online poll asking the public whether the term "artificial intelligence," or "AI," should be replaced with a new name.

In a post on Truth Social, the social media platform he uses to communicate with supporters, Trump said the current term fails to capture what he described as a fast-growing technological revolution. He wrote that "many people" consider the words "Artificial Intelligence" inaccurate and "very ineloquent."

He offered three alternatives that he called more elegant and accurate: superior intelligence, extreme intelligence and supreme intelligence.

Trump urged his followers to take part, closing the post by saying he would appreciate everybody voting on the best name for what he called an ever-growing "Revolution."

Nearly 30,000 people voted within an hour of the poll going up. By early afternoon Saturday, superior intelligence was leading with 42% of the vote.

Trump has a history of promoting his own labels to shape public opinion. He has used "fake news" to describe mainstream journalism and popularized "deep state" in reference to career government officials. He also referred to COVID-19 as the "Chinese Virus" and "Kung Flu."

The poll comes as debate over AI regulation intensifies. Reports in recent months of AI systems displaying capabilities beyond what many industry insiders expected have prompted alarm, along with calls to slow development and tighten government oversight.

The dispute sharpened last week after Dario Amodei, CEO of AI company Anthropic, called on competitors to deliberately slow the development of frontier AI models, the most advanced systems being built, until lawmakers can regulate the industry more effectively.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Elon Musk of xAI have also said AI models are advancing faster than humans can align, test, and safely control them.

Trump has sided with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and David Sacks, co-chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), in rejecting calls to slow AI development.

He argues that any forced slowdown on American laboratories would amount to self-sabotage and give Chinese companies an advantage. He has dismissed warnings that AI could take over or harm humans as a "hoax" and a "sick conspiracy."

Earlier this week, Trump wrote that the only guardrails AI needs are "a STRONG AND SMART PRESIDENT." In a separate post, he said the government already holds "tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power" over AI companies and warned that "whoever wins AI, wins."

Public opinion appears more cautious than excited. New data released Thursday by the Pew Research Center, a US-based nonpartisan polling organization, surveyed people in about three dozen countries.

It found that in roughly half of them, the most common sentiment is being equally concerned and excited about AI's growing role in daily life. In Australia, Brazil, Canada and the United States, 50% or more of respondents said they are more worried than excited.

Younger people are more aware of AI than older people, and their concern is growing more quickly, the survey found. Since 2024, the share of Americans ages 18 to 34 who say they are more concerned than excited has risen from 40% to 55%.

I placed the subhead where the article moves from the poll itself to the wider regulation debate. If you would rather split the article differently, for example, by adding a second subhead before the Pew data, I can do that.