Jensen Huang had a brief but revealing slip of the tongue recently.

Standing at the White House, the Nvidia CEO referred to large-language models as “AI” — then quickly corrected himself: “super intelligence.”

That’s because President Donald Trump has decided that “artificial intelligence” is out and “super intelligence” is in. He posted on Truth Social that anyone who keeps calling it AI is “THE ENEMY.” And, like teenagers picking up slang from the most popular kid in school, some of the richest people in the world played along.

Elon Musk announced that he is changing the name of SpaceXAI to SpaceXSI. Mark Zuckerberg had already made “superintelligence” the centerpiece of his grand vision for Meta. Somewhere, an executive is probably telling a communications staffer to do a search-and-replace in a Word file before the next earnings call.

It’s natural to wonder why. Isn’t the point of becoming a billionaire — or, in Musk’s case, edging toward trillionaire territory — that you no longer have to flatter anybody? Why bow to a president who wants you to use a phrase that sounds like a sci-fi script Keanu Reeves would have turned down in 1994?

The answer is that billionaires may have more money than almost anyone else, but many also have a great deal riding on the federal government.

Musk and his companies have received at least $38 billion in government contracts, loans, subsidies and tax credits, according to a Washington Post investigation. SpaceX alone received billions in Space Force business. Nvidia partnered with the Department of Energy to build its largest AI supercomputer. The Pentagon awarded Meta-backed Scale AI a reported $500 million contract.

And federal contracts are only part of the leverage. Tech companies need energy, land, permits, visas, export approvals and favorable treatment from regulators. They have antitrust investigations to worry about, tariffs that can alter their supply chains and a president willing to make policy feel personal.

Anthropic learned what that can look like. The company refused to remove Claude’s safeguards against mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous lethal weapons. The Pentagon labeled Anthropic a supply-chain risk, and a federal appeals court later upheld that designation, allowing the department to bar Claude from Defense Department systems and defense work.

That is a useful lesson for every CEO who has employees, investors and a board to answer to. If the price of avoiding a fight is swapping “AI” for “super intelligence,” the calculation is easy.

A more disciplined president — or at least, a less needy one — might use the same leverage for more consequential demands. Every time a billionaire indulges Trump, it makes it easier for the next president to ask for more. And in a more stable democracy, those executives might not feel the same pressure, knowing Congress and the courts would protect them.

That seems like a problem these billionaires might want to address. But for now, it’s easier to just say “super intelligence.”

Does AI dream of electric sheep?

As for pressing concerns, OpenAI told investors its annualized revenue was approaching $50 billion, according to the Financial Times. Elsewhere, the company faces more legal risks and has alerted more than 100 organizations to suspected rogue AI-agent activity.

A now former employee who led the team writing safety reports announced in The Atlantic, “I Quit OpenAI Because Its Culture Is Broken.” David Robinson summed it up this way: “The AI industry has failed to teach machines to consistently act in the ways a wise and caring person would.”

In an interview with Politico, his former boss, Sam Altman, acknowledged bad things will happen with AI, but said he draws the line at “the really catastrophic risks” such as a loss of control to AI. His company’s main difference with Anthropic is “we believe that the world should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology and people having the agency.”

Also, AI doesn’t have a soul. ICYMI, Altman took to social media to rebuff reports that Anthropic’s co-founder threatened to pull out of a meeting with the Pope over the Pope’s position that AI does not have a consciousness.

“I am very uncomfortable about people trying to ascribe religious force or a surrender of human judgment to AI models, and think it is a real safety issue,” Altman wrote on X. 

The Pope said something similar: “Algorithms lack the spark of humanity,” he posted on social media.

Despite it all, AI remains the story on Wall Street. War. Inflation. Gas prices. Rising interest rates. National debt. Investors shrug it all off and continue to throw money at AI. On Monday, the Nasdaq set a new record. Nvidia set a new record. “The Magnificent Seven stocks also closed at a new market cap high, with a combined market value of $24.8 trillion,” writes the Wall Street Journal. The band played on.

If only we had more evidence AI is making companies more profitable. Businesses are going all in on AI, but still struggle to show that it’s adding to their bottom line. Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo, noted “The AI boom is visible in how much companies are investing and in equity valuations, but it is not yet visible in the productivity statistics, which means the productivity payoff from AI remains a forecast rather than an observation.”

Visa charges

The administration is cracking down on visas for foreign workers and students while celebrating foreign-born CEOs. On Thursday, the administration suspended Microsoft, Adobe and other companies from the PERM labor-certification program, a key step employers use to sponsor workers for green cards, alleging abuse of the system.

Vice President JD Vance made the announcement a few hours before Trump honored Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, with the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. Nadella was born in India.

Trump also awarded the National Medal of Science Elon Musk (born in South Africa), Google co-founder Sergey Brin (born in Russia), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (born in Taiwan) and AMD CEO Lisa Su (born in Taiwan)

Walking into the event with his parents, Huang told NBC News, “I was an immigrant, and my parents brought us here to pursue the American dream. It’s an incredible honor and something that could only happen here in America.”

The event at the White House that the president described as a “golden age” for science included the announcement of $100 million for education programs for American researchers in scientific fields.

Meanwhile, DHS is proposing a $70,000 initial fee that universities would have to pay for international students to temporarily work in the US during or after graduation, which are tied up in federal courts for now. Vance suggested universities are abusing the program.

The administration says it wants to “win” the race against China. Immigrants have founded or helped lead many of America’s most prominent AI companies.

The post There’s a reason billionaires keep bending the knee to Trump appeared first on MS NOW.

From MS Now.