The Great American AI Act (GAAIA) discussion draft bill represents Congress’ most significant attempt to establish a federal governance framework for frontier artificial intelligence (AI) development. In a new insight, Technology and Innovation Policy Analyst Angela Luna reviews the proposal’s key features and potential challenges if it is enacted.

Key points:

• The GAAIA discussion draft comes at a critical moment in the U.S. AI policy debate; as AI capabilities advance, policymakers have shifted between “precautionary principle” and “permissionless innovation” paradigms for governing AI.
• Amid a growing patchwork of state AI laws, the draft bill seeks to establish a single federal baseline—rooted in transparency and accountability standards—for the development of frontier AI, with proponents arguing that nationally consistent standards can better support innovation while reducing regulatory fragmentation.
• While the proposal seeks to offer a middle ground between highly prescriptive and lighter-touch approaches and addresses several important aspects of the AI policy debate, it also raises important questions about where to draw the line between AI development and deployment, whether transparency and accountability are sufficient to govern frontier AI risks, and whether state preemption leaves enough room to address other AI regulatory issues.

Read the analysis.