At the center of OpenAI’s proposal is a distinction between government evaluation and government approval. The company proposed that the most capable AI models undergo pre-release assessments by the Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI), the federal government’s AI evaluation and standards body, while stopping short of giving regulators authority to approve or block deployments.
“Policymakers should require the most capable frontier models to undergo a CAISI evaluation before public release,” OpenAI wrote in its proposal, “Democratic Governance of Frontier AI: A blueprint for a federal framework.” But it added that “CAISI’s role should be to conduct evaluations and recommend mitigations—not to approve or block deployments.”
It also proposed a broader federal framework that would require evaluations, audits, transparency reports, incident reporting, whistleblower protections, and stronger security controls around frontier AI systems.
Shaping the governance debate
Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief analyst at Greyhound Research, said OpenAI’s proposal appears designed to influence the direction of an emerging federal governance framework rather than respond to one that is already settled.
