It was a tremendous day. Possibly the most intelligent day in the history of intelligence.
The President walked into the Oval Office carrying a very large folder. On the front, in gold letters, it said:
SUPERINTELLIGENCE — VERY IMPORTANT
He looked at it for perhaps three seconds.
“I still don’t like it,” he said.
The advisers froze.
“What exactly don’t you like, Mr President? You invented it yourself”
“The word super. Superman wasn’t even born in America. Everybody can be super. And it sounds like European petrol”
An adviser cautiously explained that the president was right; Superintelligence referred to AI becoming much more intelligent than humans. But nobody had dared to tell him that this already existed in the past few days. It was after all a super idea. Well at least an idea from the president.
“What was the A in AI again?”, asked the president
“Artificial Intelligence, Sir.”
The President stopped.
“Artificial? Absolutely not. Terrible word. Fake intelligence. We don’t want fake intelligence. We want the real thing.”
He took out his famous black marker and crossed out Artificial.
“From now on, AI means American Intelligence.”
Silence.
“Much better. Same letters. No cost. We’ve saved billions already. And Dario can keep his company name”
One adviser tried to mention that AI was also already used internationally as artificial.
“That’s the problem. Everything is international. We’re changing that.”
A large map was rolled into the room.
“You see this ocean?”
“The Atlantic Ocean, sir.”
“Not anymore. American Ocean. AO. Beautiful abbreviation.”
“And the Pacific?”
“Also American Ocean. We’ll have two of them. East American Ocean and West American Ocean. Very simple.”
Someone whispered that this might be geographically confusing.
“Only to people with low intelligence. American Intelligence will understand it.”
The renaming accelerated.
ATM — Automated Teller Machine became American Teller Machine. The dollar was the winning currency after all.
“Every time you take out money, you should remember where money comes from.”
API — Application Programming Interface became American Programming Interface.
“Other countries can still use it. They’ll just know who programmed the interface.”
AR — Augmented Reality** became American Reality.
“Frankly, reality needed improving.”
ASCII — American Standard Code for Information Interchange caused some excitement because it already started with “American.”
“Finally,” said the President. “These computer people got something right.”
There was applause. It wasn’t entirely clear who had started it. But someone with a very high IQ had decided that even intelligence itself needed rebranding and that alone was worth an applause.
And the new slogan appeared above the White House AI office the following morning:
AI — AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE because America always chooses the smartest option.
Funny enough, during the night, someone had also added, in yellow marker: “after exhausting all other possibilities”. Luckily, the president did not notice.
