California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order on Sept. 30 telling state agencies to keep saying "artificial intelligence," one day after President Donald Trump ordered the federal government to stop.
That is the whole feud: two governments, one technology, two vocabularies. The Epoch Times reported the details, and ZeroHedge republished them. Politico's framing of the exchange was "war of words."
Newsom's order says all agencies and departments under his authority "shall refer to Artificial Intelligence and AI as 'Artificial Intelligence' and 'AI,' notwithstanding any rebranded or different terminology used by the federal government, unless inconsistent with the law."
Then it gets personal, sort of. The order does not name Trump or the White House. It does say this:
purporting to change something's name cannot distract a person of normal intelligence from recognizing the impotent and craven failure to take action to address well-documented emerging security and safety risks posed by that thing.
Newsom's accompanying statement does reference the president. "Super intelligence is clearly not coming from the White House - that's why California continues to lead," he said. He added that AI should expand opportunity rather than come at the expense of workers and families.
The White House, asked for comment on Newsom's order, pointed to Trump's recent public remarks. In them, Trump defended the rename. "We don't call it artificial intelligence because it's not artificial. It's real. It's a terrible word," he said. "Artificial means it's fake or it's false, and this is not. This is real."
He also said he considered "superior intelligence" and "supreme intelligence." He passed on both because he "didn't want to mix it up with the Supreme Court - get myself in trouble." Trump added that the U.S. and China are the only two countries competing in the field, and that the U.S. is "leading them by a lot." "Whoever wins super intelligence wins," he said.
His Sept. 29 order directs agencies, "to the maximum extent permitted by law," to use "Super Intelligence" and "SI" instead. It says the executive branch "will not acknowledge the usage of 'Artificial Intelligence' and 'AI' in any applicable setting." That covers correspondence, public communications, websites, reports, policy documents and other non-statutory documents. Previously issued regulations, contracts, grants and historical documents are spared.
The order says the new term "more appropriately captures the promise, potential, and rapidly advancing capabilities of these technologies." A White House fact sheet says the president's science adviser must propose a federal definition of "Super Intelligence" within 60 days. So the name came first. The definition is homework.
Newsom did more than trade lines. His office says he also signed 13 bills on Sept. 30 covering AI in the workplace, health care, digital watermarks, deepfakes and digital replicas, legal work, and gene synthesis companies. His office called the workplace measures the nation's first. They bar employers from relying only on AI for a disciplinary or termination decision. They require disclosure when an AI system causes a mass layoff, relocation or termination. They ban workplace surveillance tools in bathrooms.
California Federation of Labor Unions President Lorena Gonzalez, speaking about four of the bills, said they show how to "put guardrails on AI at work" and "put workers first."
The next verifiable move belongs to Trump's side: the science adviser's proposed definition of "Super Intelligence," due within 60 days of the Sept. 29 order.