Trump tells the UN that AI is now ‘superintelligence’ and mocks warnings it will ‘kill us all’
President Trump used his address to the UN General Assembly today to announce he’s renaming artificial intelligence. From now on, he said, it’s “superintelligence,” or SI, and the United States has no intention of letting anyone rein it in.
“Whoever wins superintelligence, wins”
Trump framed AI as a race the U.S. is already winning, and one it plans to keep winning.
Whoever wins AI, you have to remember this, and now I say whoever wins SI, whoever wins superintelligence, wins. That’s the group that wins.
President Donald Trump
“We’re leading now over China by a lot and everyone else,” he said. “We’re going to keep it that way.”
He also took aim at international efforts to govern the technology, delivered from the podium of the institution most associated with them: “The United States also totally rejects any attempt to construct a globalist scheme to control for the artificial intelligence being spoken of so much now.”
“Encourage it, not rein it in”
Trump made clear that his administration sees regulation as the bigger risk. “I’m not going to stifle growth of something that will be bigger than the Industrial Revolution, many say bigger than the Industrial Revolution or the internet itself,” he said.
“We will only encourage superintelligence. We’re going to encourage it, not rein it in. We’re going to watch it closely through the Department of Justice.” He added that the U.S. “leads the world in superintelligence and will continue to do so safely and responsibly.”
“The same people”
The most pointed line was aimed at those warning about AI’s risks:
The very same people who said we’ll all be dead in 12 years because of global warming… and nobody was dead. These are the same people that are now saying that AI is going to kill us all, that robots are going to attack us, and that everything is going to be a total disaster.
President Donald Trump
The timing is awkward. Those warnings aren’t only coming from activists. Earlier this month, Anthropic’s own alignment lead put the odds that AI “could kill all humans” within a decade at more than 10%, and several of the industry’s biggest AI companies have recently called publicly for frontier development to slow down.
Meanwhile, a hotline to Beijing
The tough talk sits alongside a more cautious move from Trump’s own administration. On Sunday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent unveiled plans for a formal U.S.-China channel to flag dangerous AI activity, including runaway agents, cyberattacks and bioweapons development, after an eight-hour meeting with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng in New York.
According to Al Jazeera, it would be the first such arrangement between the world’s two largest AI powers, and officials from both countries plan to meet again in Shenzhen in about two months. Exactly what would trigger a notification hasn’t been made public. Trump is expected to pitch the idea to Xi Jinping directly at their summit, which runs Wednesday through Friday.
AI was just one part of a roughly 35-minute speech that also included an ultimatum for Iran to make a deal or face annihilation, and a new security agreement with Greenland and Denmark.
Sources: Fox Business, CBS News, ABC News, Al Jazeera