Self-Improving AI Monitoring Act
Sponsored By: Representative Whitesides, George [D-CA-27]
Introduced
Summary
Expands NIST oversight of frontier AI capabilities. This bill would direct the NIST Director to assess trends in AI capabilities, including systems that can autonomously perform research or development, and to require specific disclosures and evaluations in memorandums of understanding for pre-deployment testing of frontier AI systems.
Show full summary
- Developers of frontier AI systems would have to disclose detailed pre-deployment evaluation information in memorandums of understanding. Required items include specific metrics, estimates of unsupervised usage, methodologies, and an explicit evaluation of any autonomous ability to facilitate or conduct research and development.
- The Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology would gain a new duty to assess AI capability trends, including autonomous R&D features, using information from those disclosures and other sources.
- Regulators, safety researchers, and auditors would get clearer, standardized materials to review how frontier systems are evaluated before deployment, increasing transparency and accountability.
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Bill Overview
Analyzed Economic Effects
1 provisions identified: 0 benefits, 0 costs, 1 mixed.
New rules for frontier AI developers
If enacted, the bill would add a duty for the NIST Director to track trends in AI capabilities, including abilities that might autonomously do research or development. The bill would stop NIST from signing a memorandum of understanding to run a pre-deployment test for a developer's designated "frontier" AI system unless the MoU requires certain disclosures on request. Developers would need to disclose a metric they already keep about how AI was used to help build the frontier system, an estimate of how much that use happened without human review, and a description of how they made that estimate. The pre-deployment test would also have to evaluate whether the frontier AI system can autonomously facilitate or conduct research or development of an AI system.
Sponsors & CoSponsors
Sponsor
Whitesides, George [D-CA-27]
CA • D
Cosponsors
Rep. Harrigan, Pat [R-NC-10]
NC • R
Sponsored 8/27/2026
Roll Call Votes
No roll call votes available for this bill.
View on Congress.gov