This page may contain stale information. Last updated: 2026-06-24
Definition
CAISI (Center for AI Standards and Innovation) is a civilian office within the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). It serves as the federal government’s AI evaluation and standards body.
Key Points
- 2026-06-04: great-american-ai-act discussion draft would codify CAISI with $100M/year FY2027–2029; certify IVOs (2026-06-04-great-american-ai-act-trahan-official)
- 2026-06-03: openai blueprint proposes CAISI as primary federal institution for frontier AI safety evaluations, superseding NSA-led benchmarking in Trump AI EO (2026-06-03-openai-frontier-ai-governance-blueprint)
- OpenAI position: Mandatory pre-release CAISI evaluations for most capable models; CAISI recommends mitigations but does not approve/block deployments
- 2026-06-24: meta sole holdout on voluntary frontier model reviews; OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, xAI agreed (2026-06-24-meta-ai-frontier-model-review-pressure)
- Voluntary agreements: OpenAI and anthropic already share information with CAISI
- Institutional fault line: Civilian NIST/CAISI vs intelligence-community NSA oversight for frontier model benchmarking
Related
- ai-governance
- frontier-models
- agentic-ai-regulation
- openai
- regulatory-compliance
- great-american-ai-act
- independent-verification-organizations
- nairr