AI for Effort Many members of U.S. Congress are famously clueless about technology, with some critics afraid the legislators, some of them very old, won’t be up to the task of trying to regulate and guide the explosive rise of AI. On the other hand, look no further than the 73-year-old Representative Don Beyer (D-VA), who took it upon himself to sign up for a master’s degree program in machine learning at George Mason University, The Associated Press reports, with an eye to learning more about a technology that many have touted will change the world (and also quite possibly put lots of people out of jobs). “I tend to be an AI optimist,” Beyer told the AP. “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.” Teacher’s Pet Beyer’s interest in learning more about AI isn’t entirely surprising. The politician and auto dealership mogul also heads a bipartisan caucus on nuclear fusion and is a big nerd on reading geometry tomes, according to the AP. Being in a master’s program for machine learning puts him way ahead of the curve in the halls of Congress — which had Texas Senator Ted Cruz fuming last year that the legislative body “doesn’t know what the hell it’s doing” on AI. Members of Congress have a…Congressman Getting Master’s Degree in Machine Learning So He Can Make Well-Informed Laws About AI