Donald Trump's proposal to rename AI "superintelligence" sparks boom in .si domain registrations

US President Donald Trump recently proposed calling artificial intelligence not AI, but SI, short for super intelligence. The same domain extension, .si, is used by Internet addresses in Slovenia. Applications for .si domains in the small Central European country reached unprecedented levels in September, according to the national registrar.

Register.si spokeswoman Klara Herman said that in September 44,000 web addresses with the .si extension were registered, while in August there were less than 2,000. In other words, an increase of more than 2,100%.

She said the scale of activity at the end of September was "unprecedented" compared with the previous 12 months.

President Trump called for the technology to be renamed during his speech at the UN General Assembly in New York on September 22.

“Using the word 'artificial' makes the name sound like it's fake,” he said. - And he’s not fake, in fact he’s amazing. But we must be careful... welcome to the new world of superintelligence."

Internet domains are unique, human-readable addresses that people enter into web browsers to access websites - for example, bbc.com/russian.

Herman noted that the number of .si web address registrations in September stood out "very clearly" compared to other months of the year, although she is "cautious" about the idea that Trump's comments alone were behind the increase in registrations.

According to her, 11,000 new domains were registered on September 30 alone.

One possible explanation for such purchases is cybersquatting - when people register certain domain names with an eye to resale for big money if someone suddenly needs that name.

For example, in 1997, Rick Schwartz, known as the "domain king," bought the domain name men.com for $15,000. Seven years later, he sold it for $1.32 million.

On Tuesday, President Trump met with executives from leading technology companies, calling it an "extraordinary gathering" of people "creating America's Golden Age."

He signed an executive order directing US departments and agencies to begin using the terms SI and Super Intelligence and to no longer allow the use of the term AI.

According to the decree, SI will replace AI in “official correspondence,” on websites, in reports and other forms of communication.

The Internet, however, had a blast when it turned out that President Trump's executive order had United States misspelled under his signature.