SlangEmerging
SI
initialism
Super Intelligence — a term the U.S. executive branch has been directed to use in place of Artificial Intelligence in many non-statutory government communications. It can easily be confused with the older term superintelligence, which means something different.
When AI became SI
Unlike most terms in this dictionary, this use of SI did not emerge organically from internet culture.
It was introduced through a U.S. executive order.
On September 29, 2026, the order Inaugurating the Era of Super Intelligence directed executive departments and agencies, to the maximum extent permitted by law, to use Super Intelligence and SI instead of Artificial Intelligence and AI in official correspondence, public communications, websites, reports, policy documents and other non-statutory executive-branch documents.
The agency updated its AI guidance — or SI guidance, under the new terminology.
Original example written for this dictionary.
For purposes of the order, SI currently covers the technologies and systems already included in the existing federal statutory definition of artificial intelligence. An independent IAPP analysis described the immediate change as linguistic rather than a wholesale rewriting of U.S. AI law.
Super Intelligence is not superintelligence
This is where things get confusing.
Super Intelligence, written as two words in the executive order, is currently a replacement label for technologies already covered by the federal definition of AI.
Superintelligence, usually written as one word, has long been used in AI discussions for hypothetical intelligence that greatly exceeds human capabilities.
So these sentences can mean very different things:
The agency published new SI guidance.
Researchers are worried about controlling future superintelligence.
In the first sentence, SI may describe technology that almost everyone outside that government context would still call AI.
In the second, superintelligence refers to a hypothetical level of machine intelligence beyond current systems.
The spelling difference is small.
The conceptual difference is not.
How to tell which SI someone means
Context now has to do much of the work.
If SI appears in a U.S. executive-branch document published after September 29, 2026, it may be using the new government terminology.
If it appears in an older AI-safety paper, an AGI debate or a discussion about machines becoming vastly more capable than humans, it is much more likely to mean traditional superintelligence.
Outside the scope of the executive order, AI has not simply disappeared.
Existing statutes and previously issued regulations, presidential actions, contracts, grants and historical documents do not have to be rewritten under the order.
The IAPP also notes that existing legal definitions remain in place for now, creating a situation where organizations may encounter overlapping terminology depending on the document and jurisdiction involved.
The meaning could still change
The terminology is exceptionally new.
The executive order instructs the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology to submit proposed legislative language within 60 days for a federal definition of Super Intelligence and SI.
That proposal must include an assessment of whether the new definition should modify, expand upon or otherwise supersede the existing statutory definition of artificial intelligence.
That does not mean such a change has already happened.
For now, the definition used by the order points back to the existing federal definition of AI.
So when you encounter SI, context matters more than ever.
In this official sense, the term is only days old — and its future use is still unsettled.