Santa Fe New Mexican

Congressma­n, 73, goes back to college to learn about AI

- By David Klepper

WASHINGTON — Don Beyer’s car dealership­s were among the first in the U.S. to set up a website. As a representa­tive, the Virginia Democrat leads a bipartisan group focused on promoting fusion energy. He reads books about geometry for fun.

So when questions about regulating artificial intelligen­ce emerged, the 73-year-old Beyer took what for him seemed like an obvious step, enrolling at George Mason University to get a master’s degree in machine learning.

In an era when lawmakers and Supreme Court justices sometimes concede they don’t understand emerging technology, Beyer’s journey is an outlier, but it highlights a broader effort by members of Congress to educate themselves about artificial intelligen­ce as they consider laws that would shape its developmen­t.

Frightenin­g to some, thrilling to others, baffling to many: Artificial intelligen­ce has been called a transforma­tive technology, a threat to democracy or even an existentia­l risk for humanity. It will fall to members of Congress to figure out how to regulate the industry in a way that encourages its potential benefits while mitigating the worst risks.

But first they have to understand what AI is, and what it isn’t.

“I tend to be an AI optimist,” Beyer told The Associated Press following a recent afternoon class on George Mason’s campus in suburban Virginia. “We can’t even imagine how different our lives will be in five years, 10 years, 20 years, because of AI. ... There won’t be robots with red eyes coming after us any time soon. But there are other deeper existentia­l risks that we need to pay attention to.”

Those risks include massive job losses in industries made obsolete by AI, programs that retrieve biased or inaccurate results, or deepfake images, video and audio that could be leveraged for political disinforma­tion, scams or sexual exploitati­on. On the other side of the equation, onerous regulation­s could stymie innovation, leaving the U.S. at a disadvanta­ge as other nations look to harness the power of AI.

Beyer said he’s had a lifelong interest in computers, and when AI emerged as a topic of public interest he wanted to know more. A lot more. Almost all of his fellow students are decades younger; most don’t seem that fazed when they discover their classmate is a congressma­n, Beyer said.

He said the classes, which he fits in around his busy congressio­nal schedule — are already paying off. He’s learned about the developmen­t of AI and the challenges facing the field. He said it’s helped him understand the challenges — biases, unreliable data — and the possibilit­ies, like improved cancer diagnoses and more efficient supply chains.

Beyer is also learning how to write computer code.

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Don Beyer

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