US Census Bureau renames 'Artificial Intelligence' to 'Super Intelligence' in business survey under federal executive order
2026-11-02
Simon Willison reported that, per Executive Order 14434, the US Census Bureau's Business Trends and Outlook Survey changed its AI-usage question wording from "Artificial Intelligence (AI)" to "Super Intelligence or SI (formerly referred to as Artificial Intelligence or AI)" starting with the October 19, 2026 data collection, with results under the new wording due for publication shortly. The survey's wording had already changed once before, on November 17, 2025, from asking about AI use "in producing goods or services" to use "in any of its business functions" — under which large-company (250+ employees) reported AI usage rose from about 12% in September 2025 to about 40% by October 2026.
Significance 3: A federal executive order mandating a terminology change in an official government economic-adoption survey is a concrete, unusual policy development affecting how US AI adoption gets measured going forward, though it changes labeling rather than a tracked axis or verdict.
Implications · machine-drafted, not owner judgment
Renaming 'Artificial Intelligence' to 'Super Intelligence' in a federal survey used to track corporate AI adoption is a visible instance of administration-favored terminology being imposed on statistical infrastructure, and it stacks on an earlier wording change from November 2025 — breaking time-series comparability right as adoption appears to be accelerating. Any adoption-rate chart built on this series going forward needs a footnote. For the book's timing argument, this is a small, concrete marker of AI terminology becoming politicized, worth citing as a framing data point.
- Whether the results using the new 'Super Intelligence' wording, due for publication shortly, show a discontinuity from prior readings
- Whether other federal statistical agencies adopt the same terminology change
Sources
- curator The U.S. Census Bureau and 'Super Intelligence' retrieved 2026-11-02