In Washington, AI is now SI, at least inside the federal government. On 29 September 2026 President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled "Inaugurating The Era Of Super Intelligence", which tells federal departments and agencies to write "Super Intelligence (SI)" where they used to write artificial intelligence. The same two letters are Slovenia's country code on the internet, and the registry that runs the .si domain now logs more new .si domains in a single day than it used to see in a whole month.

Here is what the Super Intelligence executive order actually changes, what it leaves alone, why a small European country's web address got caught up in it, and what the numbers from Register.si show.

From a poll to an executive order: how AI became SI

The rename moved in ten days. On 19 September Trump posted a poll on Truth Social asking whether artificial intelligence should get a new name; the security company Netcraft dates the post to 15:29 UTC. The two options were "super intelligence" and "superior intelligence", both abbreviated SI. According to Newsweek, more than 50,000 people answered and 65 percent chose "super intelligence".

On 22 September he took the idea to the United Nations General Assembly. "Whoever wins superintelligence wins," he said, as reported by UN News. The PBS NewsHour fact check quotes him saying that "all United States documents and hopefully the world's will be changed to use the much more accurate term 'super' as opposed to artificial."

The use of the word artificial makes intelligence fake, it makes it sound fake and it is not fake. It's actually amazing.
Donald Trump at the UN General Assembly, 22 September 2026, as reported by the Associated Press

The State Department moved the same day. An email with the subject line "Change in Nomenclature AI to SI", sent by Michael Drager, deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of International Organization Affairs, told diplomats to replace references to artificial intelligence with Super Intelligence in documents and communications, the Associated Press reported. US representatives then used the new term at a UN Security Council meeting on the technology.

What the Super Intelligence executive order changes, and what it does not

The order of 29 September makes the switch official for the whole executive branch. According to the White House fact sheet, departments and agencies replace "Artificial Intelligence" and "AI" with "Super Intelligence" and "SI" in official correspondence, public communications, policy documents and non statutory materials. PCMag quotes the order's reasoning: the new term "more appropriately captures the promise, potential, and rapidly advancing capabilities" of the technology. At the White House, Trump explained it in his own words: "Because it's not artificial, we all agree on that." Earlier he had said the new name "sounds much better."

The order also asks for a definition. Nextgov/FCW reports that the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology has 60 days to propose legislative language that defines super intelligence, including whether it should "modify, expand upon or supersede the legal definition of AI."

The limits matter for everyone outside the federal government. PCMag reports that the order applies only to the executive branch and does not alter previously issued regulations, presidential actions, contracts, grants or historical documents. Laws keep their wording, private companies are not bound by it and can keep saying AI, and rules abroad, such as the European Union's AI Act, are untouched.

The White House Accord on Super Intelligence

On the same day, technology leaders signed a voluntary pact that Al Jazeera and PCMag call the White House Accord on Super Intelligence. Nextgov lists Sundar Pichai of Google, Dario Amodei of Anthropic, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, Greg Brockman of OpenAI, Elon Musk of xAI and Jensen Huang of Nvidia among the signatories. The companies commit to four layers of controls: internal controls, internal oversight teams, independent external auditors and an independent committee that reviews the results.

The accord is not legally binding. Al Jazeera reports that it contains no penalties, that audit results do not have to be published and that the government has no enforcement role; Trump called it "morally binding" and said there would be "a tremendous self-policing aspect". Pichai said it "contains real tangible steps to promote safe development". Chris Lehane, chief global affairs officer at OpenAI, had called in a post in September for mandatory national safety standards, writing that industry led standards should complement mandatory federal safeguards and democratic oversight, not replace them. Musk described the arrangement as "just generally grading each other's homework", according to Nextgov.

Critics focused on that point. "The companies building the most powerful AI systems are warning us that the technology is advancing faster than our safeguards. The President's response? To rename it and tell the companies developing it to regulate themselves," said Senator Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, as quoted by PCMag. Vice President JD Vance defended the approach at the White House: "most bureaucrats just know way less about this than the people who are actually building these products," he said, according to Nextgov.

Is today's AI really superintelligence?

In the research world, super intelligence and artificial intelligence are not the same thing. The PBS NewsHour fact check cites Google DeepMind's definition of superintelligence as "an artificial general intelligence that has superhuman abilities across virtually all tasks and domains of human interest and activity", and notes that current systems fall short of it: the 2026 International AI Safety Report describes their performance as "jagged across tasks and contexts". Whether the new word spreads beyond government is open. "It seems unlikely the re-branding will take off unless tech leaders adopt the term," Jean-Pierre Dubé, a marketing professor at the University of Chicago, told Newsweek.

Why .si domains are booming

Every country has a two letter country code top level domain, or ccTLD. Slovenia's is .si, so every "SI" brand, product or startup name suddenly had an obvious web address. The registry, Register.si, is run by Arnes, the Academic and Research Network of Slovenia.

On 25 September Register.si reported 3,698 new .si domains in 24 hours, against 3,515 in the whole previous month, according to N1 Slovenia. That is roughly 117 a day before the rush. AFP reported on 29 September that Register.si had received an average of about 3,700 domain requests a day since the UN speech, compared with about 3,500 in all of August. By the evening of 30 September the 24 hour count had roughly tripled from that level.

11,455
New .si domains registered in the 24 hours before 22:34 UTC on 30 September 2026, according to the Register.si counter

At 22:34 UTC on 30 September the counter on Register.si showed 235,389 .si domains in total, 11,455 registered in the previous 24 hours, 46,066 over the past month and 92 accredited registrars. The registry's own notice says the new debate about naming artificial intelligence has added to interest that was already rising in recent months.

The registry is also cautious about the cause. "We would, however, be careful about attributing the entire increase to President Trump's comments," Arnes spokesperson Klara Herman told Foreign Policy. To AFP she said: "Since the speech, there has been a strong but stable increase of requests for the use of the '.si' domain." The demand looks new rather than shifted from elsewhere: "Nearly all of our .si orders are new registrations, not transfers from other providers," said Klaudijus Januitis, head of domains at the hosting company Hostinger, in the same Foreign Policy report.

.si vs .ai: price, domain speculation and cybersquatting

Price is part of the story. According to the Register.si notice, the registry charges the same EUR 10 per registration to every registrar; what a customer finally pays depends on the registrar, STA reports via Siol. Netcraft puts a .si domain at about USD 11 for one year, against about USD 180 for the minimum two year registration of a .ai domain, the address of Anguilla.

Speculators noticed. Netcraft counted more than 44,000 names that are registered under both .si and .ai, 22 percent of all .si domains. Of the .si domains it saw registered at the registrar Dynadot between the poll on 19 September and the UN speech on 22 September, about 52 percent were already listed for resale on Dynadot's aftermarket. STA found asking prices of USD 10 million for build.si, USD 8 million for seed.si and USD 5 million each for beautiful.si, coding.si and predict.si. These are asking prices, not completed sales.

Netcraft also warns of cybersquatting and typosquatting: because "s" and "a" sit next to each other on a QWERTY keyboard, a .si lookalike of a .ai site could catch mistyped addresses. Register.si's advice to brand owners is direct: holders of trademarks, slogans and company names who do not yet have a .si domain should register one as soon as possible.

What it means for Slovenia

Not a windfall. Because the registry only collects its flat fee, Register.si says media speculation about "millions in earnings for Slovenia" has no basis in reality, as reported by CE Report. It also says that, despite the sharp rise in requests, all services are running smoothly.

The comparison everyone reaches for is Anguilla, whose .ai domain earned about USD 32 million in 2023, more than 20 percent of the government's revenue, according to Foreign Policy. Slovenia's code has a humbler history. After independence the country asked for SL, which already belonged to Sierra Leone, so it received SI; the .si domain was added to the global root in April 1992, CE Report notes. In Slovenian, "si" also means "you are".

Disclosure: SheAI News is the news section of Shela and is operated by Granis d.o.o., Maribor, Slovenia.

Frequently asked questions

What does SI mean in AI, and what does Trump's Super Intelligence executive order do?

SI stands for Super Intelligence. The order of 29 September 2026 tells US executive branch departments and agencies to use "Super Intelligence (SI)" instead of "artificial intelligence (AI)" in correspondence, public communications, policy documents and non statutory materials, and gives the President's science and technology adviser 60 days to propose a legal definition.

Is AI now called SI everywhere?

No. Only the US federal executive branch must use the new term. Laws, contracts, private companies and other countries, including the EU with its AI Act, are not covered by the order.

Why is Trump renaming AI?

He says the word "artificial" makes the technology "sound fake". The order says the new term better captures the technology's "promise, potential, and rapidly advancing capabilities".

Why are .si domains suddenly popular?

.si is Slovenia's country code top level domain, so it matches the new abbreviation. Registrations jumped from about 117 a day before the rush to 11,455 in the 24 hours before 22:34 UTC on 30 September 2026.

How many .si domains are there?

235,389 at 22:34 UTC on 30 September 2026, according to the live counter on Register.si.

How much does a .si domain cost, and how do you register one?

You register a .si domain through one of the 92 registrars listed by Register.si. The registry charges every registrar a flat EUR 10; the final retail price is set by the registrar.

Does Slovenia make money from .si domains?

Very little by the standards of the headlines. The registry charges only its flat fee and says talk of millions for Slovenia has no basis in reality.

Should companies register their .si name?

Register.si advises holders of trademarks, slogans and company names without a .si domain to register one as soon as possible. Netcraft warns that .si lookalikes of .ai sites can be used for cybersquatting and typosquatting.

Is superintelligence the same as AI, and what is the White House Accord on Super Intelligence?

Not in the technical sense: Google DeepMind's definition, cited in PBS NewsHour's fact check, describes superintelligence as superhuman across virtually all tasks and domains, and current systems fall short of that. The accord, signed on 29 September by leaders of Google, Anthropic, Meta, OpenAI, xAI and Nvidia, is a voluntary pledge on internal controls, oversight teams, independent audits and board committees, with no penalties.