Absurdity
The Man Who Named A Car Plaid Thinks Artificial Intelligence Sounds Ridiculous
By Michael Yappaport, . BSN Network. Satire.
SpaceX announced this week that it is rebranding its artificial intelligence division to SI, which stands for Scalable Intelligence, a term the company's communications team selected because it "better reflects our ambitions" and because nobody in the room pushed back.
The rebrand follows an executive order signed by President Trump earlier this year directing federal agencies to stop using the phrase "artificial intelligence" in official documents, on the grounds that the word "artificial" carries negative associations. The order did not address what happens to the intelligence once the artificial part is removed.
Musk, who founded SpaceX, co-founded OpenAI, then left OpenAI, then sued OpenAI, then started his own AI company called xAI, and then named a Tesla trim level "Plaid," confirmed the change on X, which is a website he also renamed.
"SI is more accurate," he posted, at 2:14 a.m. "Artificial implies limitation. We are beyond that now."
The post received 1.2 million likes before anyone thought to ask what SI means in the context of a rocket.
Dr. Patricia Vollmer, a cognitive systems researcher at MIT who asked not to be quoted saying this, said the distinction between artificial intelligence and scalable intelligence is "not a scientific one." She elaborated: "It's a branding move. You've taken a technical term, removed the part that tells you what it does, and replaced it with an adjective that sounds like a gym."
SpaceX's next Starship launch is scheduled to rely on the same onboard systems it has always used. A company spokesperson confirmed that no underlying software has changed. "The intelligence is the same intelligence," the spokesperson said. "We're just calling it something that makes people feel better about it."
When asked whether the SI systems would be making autonomous landing decisions, the spokesperson said, "Absolutely. That's the scalable part."
Former NASA communications director Bob Cheswick, who watched seven shuttle launches and once had to explain to a senator what an orbit is, said he has seen this before. "Every few years someone in the industry decides the problem is vocabulary," he said. "Usually right around the time something blows up or the stock dips. You rename the department. You hold a town hall. You print new lanyards. The rockets don't read the lanyards."
Musk has not responded to follow-up questions, which his representatives described as "not the format he prefers."
On X, meanwhile, the discourse has moved on. The current top post under the SpaceX account is a render of a Starship vehicle with SI printed on the fuselage in a font that several users noted looks like the logo for a Florida mortgage company.
The rebranding is expected to be complete by Q2. The rockets are expected to continue doing whatever they were going to do anyway.
The story we are making fun of: https://www.theregister.com/offbeat/2026/10/05/musk-follows-trumps-lead-swaps-ai-for-si-in-spacex-rebrand/5301090