The US is advancing AI safety through state and federal action

By Chris Lehane, Chief Global Affairs Officer

From state capitals across the country to Washington to international convenings, serious approaches to frontier AI governance are taking shape. Together, they are advancing a democratic vision for AI.

California, New York, and most recently Illinois have advanced frontier safety legislation that helps move the country toward a common baseline for governing the most powerful AI systems.

These efforts reflect momentum behind what OpenAI calls reverse federalism: states helping establish a shared direction through a common framework. As state-led work converges with efforts underway at the federal level, a national standard is beginning to take shape, laying the foundation for a US-led global AI framework. We believe the best way to ensure AI benefits the many, not just the few, is for critical decisions—starting with frontier safety—to be made by democratic governments, not solely by frontier labs.

States

Ultimately, the United States would be best served by a national framework grounded in that principle. But in the absence of one, states can move us there by passing laws that mirror one another. Step by step, they can create a de facto national standard.

For that approach to succeed, states should continue aligning on the core elements, as California, New York, and Illinois have. Broadly speaking, those elements are:

• A documented safety framework with risk assessments for frontier models and public disclosure of those assessments and their results.

• Reporting of serious safety incidents.

• Governance and accountability through independent, objective audits.

Taken together, these three states have built democratic oversight into frontier AI deployment. California established the core disclosure framework. New York showed the approach could be adopted across jurisdictions. Illinois complemented it by requiring independent verification of key disclosures.