I am normally a calm and reasonable person, but I was incensed on Sept. 29, when I watched President Donald Trump brazenly announce that he and “the smartest people on the planet” (the tech bros) had summarily decided to rename artificial intelligence as super intelligence. And later that day, he signed Executive Order 14434, “Inaugurating the Era of Super Intelligence.”

The president is well-known for his branding and marketing skills, having imprinted his name on countless buildings, myriad products, crypto and minted coins. So, his grandiose attempts to rebrand something as important and buzzy as AI isn’t that surprising.

And yet, putting lipstick on a pig doesn’t alter its underlying ugliness.

As the author of seven cookbooks on Northwest cuisine, wine and travel, my beef with AI is more than hypothetical. I tested the recipes in my books, researched the facts before I published them and actually traveled to the places I wrote about.…