OpenAI has called for mandatory, capability-based national AI safety regulation in the United States, setting out a list of requirements it wants imposed on itself and its competitors, and urging Congress to legislate before it adjourns.
The proposal was published on Wednesday by Chris Lehane, the company’s chief global affairs officer. It asks for common testing and independent-assessment protocols, stronger cybersecurity requirements, clear incident-reporting rules, mandatory monitoring for model misalignment, prompt written notice when a model circumvents security controls, and mandatory alignment-evaluation gates before deployment.
Alongside that, OpenAI backed four California bills covering independent evaluation, auditor standards, screening for biological threats and protections for children using chatbots.
Governor Gavin Newsom signed two of them on Tuesday. The company calls the approach reverse federalism: states building a de facto national baseline that Congress can later codify.
It is a familiar move in Sacramento, where OpenAI has already pushed to toughen a law it originally opposed, and where the fight over who may verify AI is being settled by the same bills.
