Brundage: "Superintelligence" Has Become a Term Used in Reverse
On October 11, former OpenAI head of policy and safety Miles Brundage posted a thread on social media about the shifting fate of the term superintelligence: once a marker of taking the technology seriously, using it now signals the opposite — reflecting how industry discourse has been marketing-ized and hollowed out. He argued that public concerns about AI don't hinge on terminology, and a more capable-sounding word won't buy more public acceptance, so swapping superintelligence for artificial intelligence wouldn't help.
Confirmed
- Brundage clarified the traditional use of ASI: to distinguish current AI capabilities from those that nearly Pareto-dominate humans across all dimensions; using the word AI itself solves nothing, but distinguishing (A)SI from non-(A)SI still has value.
- He is not arguing that reverting to artificial intelligence would fix things.
- Andrew Arruda pressed repeatedly in the same thread: if neither AI nor superintelligence resolves the problem of distinguishing intelligence tiers, does that mean both terms are useless? Arruda joined the discussion starting from how "superintelligence quickly went from a serious signal to irony," but the substantive points come mainly from Brundage's original posts.
Why it matters
- This terminology debate touches a core issue in AI industry discourse: marketing-driven usage is diluting once-serious safety and capability concepts, affecting public communication and policy discussion.
2026-10-11 ~ 2026-10-11 · 6 related posts
Primary sources
- Ex-OpenAI policy chief: 'superintelligence' now signals the opposite of taking AI seriously — Miles_Brundage ·
- Miles Brundage: 'Superintelligence' as a term won't help public adoption — it could backfire — Miles_Brundage ·
- Miles Brundage on ASI's original meaning: distinguishing near-Pareto-dominant capabilities — Miles_Brundage ·
- [source] Ex-OpenAI policy chief: 'superintelligence' now signals the opposite of taking AI seriously — Miles_Brundage · 2026-10-11
- How 'superintelligence' quickly flipped from a serious signal to the opposite — andrewarruda · 2026-10-11
- [source] Miles Brundage on ASI's original meaning: distinguishing near-Pareto-dominant capabilities — Miles_Brundage · 2026-10-11
- Arruda to Brundage: if neither term solves it, what's the point? — andrewarruda · 2026-10-11
- Arruda vs Brundage: neither 'AI' nor 'superintelligence' solves the terminology problem — andrewarruda · 2026-10-11
- [source] Miles Brundage: 'Superintelligence' as a term won't help public adoption — it could backfire — Miles_Brundage · 2026-10-11