Donald Trump's Push To Replace 'Artificial Intelligence' Reaches Melania's 2027 Student Competition

Donald Trump's bid to scrub the term 'artificial intelligence' from official US language has now reached his wife's flagship education scheme, with First Lady Melania Trump renaming the Presidential Artificial Intelligence Challenge as the Presidential Super Intelligence Challenge for 2027.

Announced on Tuesday, 13 October, the competition invites K-12 students, educators and schools across the United States to develop technology-based projects addressing problems in their schools and communities.

According to the White House, the inaugural challenge engaged more than 20,000 students from all 50 states and US schools around the world. 'America's next groundbreaking idea is already sitting in a classroom,' Melania Trump said in the launch announcement.

What the Presidential SI Challenge Involves

Students are expected to complete projects involving the study, development or use of an SI method or tool to address community challenges. Educators can develop approaches to teaching or using the technology in K-12 learning.

Schools can also work towards the First Lady Seal of SI Readiness by completing specified milestones and submitting evidence of their progress. The programme describes the seal as recognition for schools taking steps to prepare students and educators to understand and use the technology responsibly.

Registration for the 2027 competition is open until 18 December 2026. The programme's official guidance says student projects must be original and created specifically for the challenge after 1 August 2026.

Why Trump Changed the Name

The rebranding follows President Donald Trump's 29 September executive order directing executive departments and agencies to use 'Super Intelligence' and 'SI' instead of 'Artificial Intelligence' and 'AI' in specified official communications, websites, reports, policy documents and other non-statutory material.

Trump had promoted the change during his address to the United Nations General Assembly on 22 September. He argued that the word 'artificial' made intelligence sound fake and said US documents should use 'Super Intelligence' instead.

He formalised the policy in Executive Order 14434, titled 'Inaugurating the Era of Super Intelligence'.

The order directs executive-branch agencies to adopt the terminology to the maximum extent permitted by law, while stating that previously issued regulations, presidential actions, contracts, grants and other historical documents do not need to be altered.

The directive does not require every private company, school, researcher or media organisation to abandon the term 'AI'. For the order's immediate implementation, 'Super Intelligence' and 'SI' refer to technologies covered by the existing statutory definition of artificial intelligence in US law.

The order also directs the president's science adviser to propose legislative language for a separate federal definition within 60 days.

How SI Differs From AI

The administration's terminology differs from the established technical use of 'superintelligence'. In AI research, the term generally refers to hypothetical systems whose cognitive capabilities would substantially exceed those of humans across a wide range of tasks.

Artificial intelligence, by contrast, covers a broad range of existing technologies, including systems designed to classify information, generate text, recognise images and make predictions. The two terms are therefore not generally interchangeable in technical discussions.

The executive order uses 'SI' as a label for systems covered by the existing statutory definition of AI; it does not establish that every system within that definition exceeds human intelligence.

The distinction matters for a school competition that encourages students to explore a wide range of technologies. The official programme guidance includes areas such as machine learning, robotics, computer vision and large language models among the tools students may use.

The challenge also introduces a readiness component for participating schools, with milestones intended to demonstrate their preparation for responsible use of the technology. Its published guidance sets out requirements for project submissions and directs educators to follow their schools' rules on classroom technology use.

The competition's new name reflects the administration's policy preference. Its published requirements, meanwhile, focus on student projects, educator participation and evidence that schools are preparing to use the technology responsibly.