Trump rebrands AI as 'super intelligence' at CEO summit

The meeting followed a rapid reversal in the Trump administration's posture. Just a week or two earlier, Trump was saying the U.S. needed to lead in AI and must not constrain it, and that anyone raising AI dangers was essentially a Chinese or Democratic plant. Days before the luncheon, Anthropic was described as being in the doghouse behind the scenes; that changed when CEO Dario Amodei was invited to a 10 p.m. dinner. At the luncheon, a wide group of tech power brokers attended, including Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Amodei.

The panelists read the gathering less as a safety breakthrough than as messaging. Sean O'Kane noted that the Defense Department still considers Anthropic a national security risk, and that Emil Michael criticizes the company regularly on X, so the relationship is not fully repaired. Anthony Ha said the agreement itself seems not super meaningful, but that the fact the gesture was felt necessary seems significant. Kirsten Korosec said the important thing that happened was a rebranding exercise around AI: 'AI is going to kill us, it's scary, it is going to take jobs — but super intelligence is not.'

Whether the rebranding sticks may hinge on whether the voluntary commitment produces any concrete policy change, and on whether the administration's internal divisions over Anthropic persist. For AI companies, the immediate practical effect looks limited, but the symbolism — that the White House felt a safety gesture was worth staging — is likely to shape how the industry talks about risk in public.