Replace the state patchwork with a single federal disclosure-and-incident-reporting regime for frontier developers, offered by some filers as the lawful path to uniformity, and by others as the price preemption must pay.
Trajectory: 2023 licensing/new-agency proposals (Altman testimony; Blumenthal-Hawley framework) gave way to the May 2024 Senate roadmap's committee-by-committee approach; concrete vehicles emerged late 2025-2026, the Hawley-Blumenthal DOE evaluation program (S.2938) and the Great American AI Act's federal frontier safety framework offered as the trade for state preemption; the administration backs a 'minimally burdensome' framework (EO 14365 Sec. 8, March 2026 legislative recommendations) and built a voluntary federal frontier-security review (EO 14409) instead of binding rules. No frontier-framework statute has advanced past introduction as of July 2026.
first seen 2023-05-16 · last seen 2026-06-04 · locus: developer
Bill-status would miss this
Senate Judiciary testimony: OpenAI proposes a new federal agency licensing above-threshold AI efforts; IBM opposes a new agency in favor of 'precision regulation'
Bipartisan Senate AI Working Group roadmap opts for rolling committee bills and $32B/yr R&D over an omnibus regulatory framework
Senate AI roadmap (May 2024)Federal transparency standard proposed in RFI responses
OSTP AI Action Plan RFICalifornia enacts the state version the federal framework would displace
CA SB 53Hawley-Blumenthal Artificial Intelligence Risk Evaluation Act (S.2938) introduced: mandatory pre-deployment DOE testing for loss-of-control and weaponization risks
AI Risk Evaluation ActEO 14365 Sec. 8 directs preparation of legislative recommendations for a uniform federal AI policy framework
EO 14365 (AI preemption)Federal frontier-framework discussion drafts circulate in Senate Commerce
White House transmits National Policy Framework for AI legislative recommendations to Congress
National AI Policy FrameworkEO 14409 establishes voluntary pre-release engagement for covered frontier models with explicit disclaimer of any mandatory licensing or preclearance
EO 14409 (frontier security)Discussion draft pairs first comprehensive federal safety/accountability framework for large frontier developers with three-year state preemption
Great American AI ActCross-corpus detections
May 2023 Senate Judiciary testimony proposes a new federal agency that 'licenses any effort above a certain scale of capabilities and can take that license away' (clm-0014). May 2025 Senate Commerce testimony calls a heavy-handed prior-approval requirement for AI 'disastrous' (clm-0016), and the March 2025 OSTP filing asks for relief from state measures in exchange for a voluntary federal partnership (clm-0001). The documents are compatible only if the 2023 licensing proposal is read as abandoned; none of the later documents says so. All three documents linked; reader decides.
4 claims · every quote links to its document
“Number one, I would form a new agency that licenses any effort above a certain scale of capabilities and can take that license away and ensure compliance with safety standards. Number two, I would create a set of safety standards focused on what you said in your third hypothesis as the dangerous capability evaluations.”
Speaker: Sam Altman, CEO, OpenAI. Third-party verbatim transcript.
“Congress has spent a lot of time over the last year debating whether to do away with regulations for the AI industry – this bill is a welcome show of bipartisan support for creating rules of the road to protect the public.”
“just come back to the question of, of whether we need an independent agency. I mean, I think we don't want to slow down regulation to address real risks right now. Right? So we have existing regulatory authorities in place who have been clear that they have the ability to regulate in their respective domains.”
Speaker: Christina Montgomery, Chief Privacy & Trust Officer, IBM. Third-party verbatim transcript.
“I think that would be disastrous. I to give a more specific answer to your previous question, which I think touches on why it would be so bad, there are three key inputs to these AI systems.”
Speaker: Sam Altman, CEO, OpenAI. Third-party verbatim transcript; transcript's 'I to give' artifact preserved.