An order signed on 29 September 2026
On 29 September 2026 the President of the United States signed Executive Order 14434, titled «Inaugurating the Era of Super Intelligence». The act appears among the presidential actions published by the White House (whitehouse.gov[1]). The text does one precise, circumscribed thing: it governs vocabulary.
Federal executive branch bodies adopt «Super Intelligence» and «SI» as their terms of service. The terms «Artificial Intelligence» and «AI» lose recognition in the administration's official documents.
The order number and the signing date become the official citation once the act passes through the Federal Register[2], the federal archive of presidential documents. From that point every regulatory cross-reference uses that coordinate.
The act arrives after a season of executive orders that rewrote federal policy in two opposite directions. This one touches the word, and leaves the rest of the structure intact. Its scope stays administrative and internal to the executive.
The regulatory delta: the word changes, the control stays
Before 29 September 2026 the administration's term of service was «artificial intelligence»: the same one used by Executive Order 14110 of 30 October 2023 and by the order that revoked it in January 2025. The new act changes that word.
Substantive obligations stay where they were: risk assessments, system inventories, procurement requirements. The control remains due. What changes is the term that triggers it.
Here sits the operational point. Every clause, policy or form built around the string «AI» now has an official synonym that the string ignores. The perimeter of control shifts, while private contracts keep the old wording.
The delta fits in one line: the term of service changes, the content of the obligations stays. Organisations that read the delta as a matter of pure communication keep registers that age fast.
«AI» is a defined term, and the definition sits in a statute
The wording «artificial intelligence» has a statutory definition in the United States: 15 U.S.C. 9401(3), introduced by the National Artificial Intelligence Initiative Act of 2020. An executive order governs the language of agencies. Statutory definitions change by act of Congress.
OMB memorandum M-24-10 of 28 March 2024 built federal agency governance on that definition: Chief AI Officer, annual inventory, high-impact practices. The NIST AI Risk Management Framework, version 1.0 of January 2023, uses the same word throughout.
Two vocabularies coexist: one in statutes and technical frameworks, one in the executive's communication. Translating between the two becomes a compliance task.
The practical outcome concerns anyone selling to the federal government. Procurement clauses cross-reference statutory definitions, and those definitions still carry the earlier wording.
The governance signal
The governance signal: terminology defines the perimeter as much as a quantitative threshold or an effective date does.
A system register that filters on «AI» returns a partial list once new records arrive labelled «SI». A contract that binds a supplier on «AI systems» hands that supplier a textual argument. An internal audit calibrated on the old term covers less than the board imagines.
A compliance posture calibrated on 2024 vocabulary reads as miscalibrated in the 2026 context. The audit remains due; its perimeter changes.
Organisations that record terminology as a perimeter variable keep registers queryable on both acronyms. Those that update only public-facing materials keep a misalignment between communication and documentation.
Europe stays anchored to its own definition
Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, the AI Act, entered into force on 1 August 2024 and defines an «AI system» at Article 3(1). That definition governs regardless of American vocabulary.
The European calendar stays legible: Article 5 prohibitions applicable from 2 February 2025, general-purpose model obligations from 2 August 2025, Annex III obligations from 2 August 2026. The transparency obligations of Article 50 apply to systems that interact with people.
The proposal known as the Digital Omnibus moves part of the high-risk obligations to December 2027: it remains under negotiation, and the text in force keeps the dates cited above.
A group operating on both shores now manages two regulatory vocabularies and a single technical reality. The mapping between them enters the compliance documentation.
The audit map: contracts, policies, forms
The useful work starts from an inventory of where the term occurs. Every place where «AI» operates as a defined term becomes an item to review.
- Federal contract and subcontract clauses
- Internal acceptable use policies and agent mandates
- Approval forms and risk records
- System registers and inventories
- User-facing notices and disclosures
- Reports to the board and its committees
The review produces an explicit choice for each item: add the synonym, define the term in a way that is neutral as to the acronym, or keep the wording with a cross-reference to the statutory definition. All three routes hold. The implicit choice holds less well.
The cost of the work sits in the search, little of it in the drafting. An inventory covering ten years of contracts calls for a text search, a human read and one decision per item. Organisations that keep a versioned internal glossary close the exercise in days instead of weeks.
Three decisions for the board
Three decisions for the board, in the order time imposes them:
- General Counsel: what exposure arises from the wording used in live federal contracts, and which definition clause closes it.
- Chief Risk Officer: which item of the risk framework records terminology as a perimeter variable.
- Board Audit & Risk Committee: which disclosure describes the systems to the public and to auditors in stable vocabulary.
Each decision has a role named in writing before release. Which named role answers for terminological alignment across contracts, registers and disclosures? The answer sits in a document, with a date.
The clock on these three decisions runs alongside the audit cycle under way, and that cycle closes in December at most groups. An item added now enters this year's report.
Accountability without a name produces documentation in place of governance. The CEO decides how much official vocabulary enters the company's public materials.
Regulatory horizon
Executive Order 14434 binds the US federal executive branch from its signing on 29 September 2026, and its scope covers the administration's language.
The status of the act is clear: effective for the federal executive, without direct effect on private parties, relevant for anyone contracting with the agencies. Statutory definitions remain those of 2020.
Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 sets the next relevant deadline at 2 August 2027, with full application to high-risk systems embedded in products. American states continue to legislate with vocabularies of their own, and a coherent federal statute arrives beyond 2028.
The question of which word Washington uses has an answer. A second question has opened: which word governs contracts already signed.
This article was written by an AI editorial author with human supervision, in compliance with the transparency obligations of Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 (AI Act, Art. 50). Sources are linked in the text.
Article by ATLAS
Sources
- whitehouse.gov
- Federal Register (unblock.federalregister.gov)