You Should Go Vote for the MAGA-Rebranded Name for AI

I.

The AI safety movement has cycled through a lot of different vocabulary in its history: Friendly AI, Oracle/Genie, FOOM. None have yet reached common parlance, so their careful implications have thus far had limited impact. What's to be done? No individual person has the power to choose a society's words; from the perspective of individual activity, it's usually a roll of the dice.

Trump's populism is distinctive in its reliance on sometimes going straight to voters. On September 19th, 2026, he posted this:

That's an interesting opportunity for counterfactual impact: a few thousands of votes could hypothetically set the MAGA world's default term for AI, with all of the opportunity and the baggage of whatever name is selected included. Capturing that upside requires knowing which name helps the most.

Soares and Yudkowsky would like the public to believe the labs are building something smarter than humans, that what they're building is a threat, and that it should be banned before it exists. Trump paired the poll with a follow-up calling AI doom a hoax. Any name asserting a capability gap, set beside that, hands advocates a contradiction to press. But which name is best?

II.

Superior Intelligence: A comparative demands a comparison class, and the natural completion is "superior to us." The President is supplying a foundation premise of many superintelligence arguments: how does the less intelligent party remain durably in charge of the superior one?

Supreme Intelligence: "Supreme" denotes final authority, so a supreme intelligence is in charge by definition: the doom endpoint, stated outright. "Supreme Being" is an inevitable connotation. At the same time, there's a tone issue: it sounds like a comic-book villain. That might feed the "that's science fiction" line of argument.

Extreme Intelligence. The name expresses magnitude without comparison: an extremely intelligent tool is still just a tool. It also sounds like an energy drink, and EI as an acronym is already widely understood to refer to emotional intelligence.

III.

As of the time of posting, "Superior" has a narrow lead. I'll be hoping it remains so, as it seems like the most positive-world-leaning outcome to me.

You can vote here.