Member-only story
Is AI Really Superintelligence?
I love artificial intelligence. I use it every day for writing, research, coding, and working through ideas. I subscribe to several cloud AI services and run open-source models on custom software on my own machines. I probably spend more time experimenting with AI than most people I know.
But now I’m being asked to call it something else.
The president recently brought together leaders from the AI industry as part of a push to replace the term “artificial intelligence” with “superintelligence.” The new name is supposed to reflect how far the technology has advanced and where it is heading.
That leaves me with a question: Is AI really superintelligence?
There is another question that may be even more important. Do we really need it to be?
What Is Superintelligence?
Superintelligence used to refer to something extraordinary: a hypothetical intelligence that would outperform humans across a broad range of intellectual abilities. That isn’t quite what I see when I use AI today.
Modern AI can do remarkable things. It can explain complex subjects, analyze documents, write code, translate languages, generate images, and process vast amounts of information. It can sometimes solve in seconds a problem that would take me hours to…
