Key facts
- President Donald Trump wants AI to be renamed 'super intelligence' (SI).
- Slovenian websites use the '.si' domain suffix.
- Over 44,000 .si domain names were registered in September.
President Donald Trump's call to rename artificial intelligence as 'super intelligence' (SI) may be behind an unprecedented surge in registrations for Slovenian (.si) website domain names. The official registry reported over 44,000 new .si domain registrations in September, a significant jump from less than 2,000 in August.
The renaming of AI to 'super intelligence' by a prominent global leader has triggered an unexpected and significant increase in demand for specific domain names, highlighting the potential for political rhetoric to influence digital real estate markets and create speculative opportunities.
President Donald Trump's recent push to rebrand artificial intelligence as 'super intelligence' (SI) may be the cause of an "unprecedented" surge in registrations for Slovenian website domain names.
According to Slovenia's official national registry, Register.si, over 44,000 web addresses with the '.si' suffix were registered in September. This marks a significant increase from less than 2,000 registrations in August, representing a jump of more than 2,100%.
Klara Herman, a spokesperson for Register.si, described the volume of activity in late September as "unprecedented" when compared to the previous 12 months. She noted that September's registrations stood out "very clearly" against other months, though she remained "cautious" about attributing the entire increase solely to President Trump's comments.
On September 30 alone, 11,000 new registrations were recorded. One potential explanation for the surge is cyber-squatting, a practice where individuals speculatively register domain names in the hope of selling them for a profit later.
President Trump advocated for the name change during a speech at the United Nations General Assembly on September 11, stating that "artificial" makes the technology sound "fake." He proposed "super intelligence" as the new term.
Following his remarks, Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday instructing US government departments and agencies to adopt "SI" and "Super Intelligence" in official correspondence, reports, and websites, ceasing the use of the term AI. Images of the signed order circulated online, with some mocking a misspelling of "United States" beneath Trump's signature.
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