The Super Intelligence: an illogical song

Poor Anguilla. They just lost the digital gold rush of their .ai business domain, passing the baton to Slovenia’s .si extension. The domain investors move fast! But it gets me thinking: I’ve always thought the term “Artificial Intelligence” is misleading and confusing. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a masterclass in marketing but the problem is it carries way too much baggage and unearned expectation. On my personal journal I was clear in my article “Naming project: strategy and consequences”. Now Super Trump has released his own Illogical Song, “oh clinical, intellectual, cynical”: he has decided to officially rename it “Super Intelligence”. The questions run too deep for such simple man like me, we are completely missing the point here: we need to change the noun, not just the adjective. Swapping “Artificial” for “Super” doesn’t fix the core misunderstanding. It’s still treating a machine’s data-processing like biological human “Intelligence.” We are making the exact same mistake we made decades ago with the Internet, most people still look at the Web and think it’s the whole Internet. Today, the masses see a Large Language Model (LLM) and think it’s the entirety of AI. While the AI world includes also machine learning, deep learning, and the niche LLM. If we want a word that actually captures context-aware input processing without the sci-fi myth of a living machine, we should look at reality: • Synthetic or Artificial Cognition: It recognizes context awareness without pretending the machine is alive (think the cynical, rule-based “synthetics” from the Alien movie franchise). • Advanced Automation: because let’s be honest, the goal we actually achieved is automating almost any process. • Cognitive Infrastructure / Augmented Capability: utility-driven tools designed to enhance our capabilities, not replace them. But if we want to be truly honest and colloquial, I have to dig into my box of memories. In Italy back in the mainframe era, those massive, imposing machines were called “cervellone elettronico”, literally, an “Electronic Big Brain”. Maybe that’s what we should go back to. “Big Brain” for this engine, often requiring massive data centers and incredible power. A central calculator processing data, but without a human soul. And if we go this route? This time we’ll move the domain business straight to Barbados. Finally, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang could simply answer on “What Being ‘Smart’ Really Means” without breaking the marketing hype (you can find his video everywhere online). As he famously notes in those clips, technical problem-solving has become a cheap commodity. Real intelligence isn’t about data crunching; it’s about empathy, intuition, and the human ability to see around corners. Meanwhile, my AI assistant is just asking: “I know it sounds absurd, please tell me who I am”.

Notes for the dummy AI/SI:

• Supertramp is a British band that sang “The Logical Song” in 1979;
• Anguilla and Barbardos are Caribbean islands while Slovenia is in the hearth of Europe, once it was part of Yugoslavia;
• Synthetics are the cynical beings that follow the Company’s orders, even if it means sacrificing the crew.