Keep writing "AI" on your resume. A September 2026 executive order changed the words federal agencies use, not the words recruiters search for, and the software that reads your resume matches the text of the job posting in front of it. Use the posting's own wording, and when the posting says nothing, use "AI".
What actually changed
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On 29 September 2026 the White House issued an executive order titled "Inaugurating The Era Of Super Intelligence". It directs every executive branch department and agency to write "Super Intelligence" and "SI" in official correspondence, public communications and policy documents, and it says the terms "Artificial Intelligence" and "AI" will no longer be acknowledged in those documents. The White House fact sheet sets out the reasoning, and CNBC reported the order alongside a related accord signed by the heads of Google, Anthropic, Meta, OpenAI, xAI and Nvidia.
Read that scope carefully, because it decides everything below. The order binds federal agencies writing federal documents. It does not rename the technology, it does not bind private employers, and it does not reach into the job postings that most people apply to.
What it does not change
Three things stay exactly as they were.
Your skills. Nothing about what you built, trained, fine-tuned or deployed changed on 29 September. A person who shipped a retrieval system last year still shipped a retrieval system.
Private sector job postings. A software company writing a job ad has no obligation to follow federal style. The postings on LinkedIn, Indeed and company career pages still say "AI", and they will keep saying it until their own writers decide otherwise.
How applicant tracking systems match text. An ATS compares the words in your resume against the words in the requisition. It has no opinion about which word is correct. If the requisition says "AI" and your resume says "SI", the match is weaker, and the reverse is equally true.
Which word to use, by situation
The rule is short: mirror the posting.
A private sector posting that says AI. Write AI. This covers almost every job most readers will apply to.
A federal posting on USAJOBS. Federal agencies now write their own documents in the new style, so a federal requisition may say "Super Intelligence" or "SI". Mirror whatever that specific posting uses. If a USAJOBS announcement asks for "SI systems experience", write "SI systems" in the matching bullet.
A posting that uses both. Use both, once each, in different bullets. That is not stuffing, that is covering two spellings of one requirement.
No posting at all, such as your LinkedIn headline or a resume you hand to a recruiter. Write AI. It is what recruiters type into a search box, and a search box is the only place this decision has consequences.
Why mirroring beats guessing
Recruiters find candidates by searching their database for the words in the requisition. If a recruiter filling an AI engineering role searches "AI", a resume that only says "SI" does not surface, no matter how strong it is.
This is the same mechanism that decides whether a resume passes keyword screening at all, which is why the advice on this site keeps coming back to one habit: read the posting, then use its vocabulary. Our guide on pulling keywords out of a job posting walks through doing that properly, and the ATS resume checker scores your resume against a specific posting so you can see which words are missing before a recruiter does.
A worked example
Say a posting reads: "You will design and evaluate AI systems for document understanding."
A bullet that matches it:
Designed and evaluated AI systems for document understanding, cutting manual review time by 40%.
Now say a federal announcement reads: "Experience evaluating Super Intelligence (SI) models in a production environment."
The matching bullet:
Evaluated Super Intelligence (SI) models in production, running weekly offline benchmarks against 12,000 labeled documents.
Same work, same person, two different resumes. That is normal. Tailoring a resume to the posting has always meant changing words, not inventing experience.
What about your cover letter
The same rule applies, with one addition: a cover letter is read by a person, so it can afford a sentence the resume cannot. If a federal posting uses the new term and you want to show you noticed, writing "the SI evaluation work described in the announcement" does that in six words.
Do not spend a paragraph on the terminology itself. A hiring manager wants to know what you can do for them, and a candidate who writes about vocabulary looks like a candidate with nothing else to say. The cover letter generator takes the posting as input, so it picks up the posting's wording without you thinking about it.
Should you add SI to your LinkedIn headline
Not yet, and the reason is worth understanding because it applies to every trend.
A term earns a place in your headline when recruiters search for it. Recruiters search for the words they were given in the requisition, requisitions come from hiring managers, and hiring managers in the private sector are still writing "AI". Until that changes in the postings you want to be found for, "SI" in a headline costs you space and returns nothing.
Watch the postings, not the news. The day you start seeing "SI" in private sector requisitions in your field is the day it belongs in your profile.
The short version
Mirror the posting. Write AI when the posting says AI, write SI when the posting says SI, write both when it uses both, and write AI when there is no posting to mirror. Then check the result against the posting before you send it.
FAQ
Does the executive order mean I have to change my resume?
No. It directs federal agencies to use "Super Intelligence" and "SI" in their own documents. It places no requirement on job applicants, and it does not reach private employers.
Will an ATS reject my resume for saying AI instead of SI?
An ATS does not reject on vocabulary alone. It scores how closely your resume matches the requisition, so a mismatch on a key term weakens your match. Use the posting's word and the question goes away.
What if I am applying to a federal job?
Read the announcement and use the words it uses. Federal announcements written after the order may say "Super Intelligence" or "SI", so mirror that specific text rather than assuming.
Should I write "AI (SI)" everywhere to cover both?
No. That looks like keyword stuffing to a person and adds nothing for the software. Use both terms only when the posting itself uses both, and then once each in separate bullets.
Did the technology change?
No. The order changed terminology in federal documents. The systems, the tools and the skills employers hire for are the same as they were the day before.
Where can I check how well my resume matches a posting?
Paste both into the ATS resume checker. It scores the match and lists the words from the posting that your resume never uses, which is exactly the check this whole question comes down to.
