While he admits that “not much has gotten done in the first four months of this Congress,” Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., is hopeful that the 119th Congress will be able to pass some meaningful AI legislation.
Speaking on Tuesday during an event hosted by GovExec, Rep. Beyer – who served as a member of last Congress’s House AI Task Force – admitted that he and his colleagues have been focused on other priorities. He noted these include continuing resolutions, keeping the government open, and the Congressional Review Act – a tool frequently used during a change in administrations to roll back regulations.
Nevertheless, Rep. Beyer said he’s “hoping that as things settle down, that we will be able to address all those legislative priorities we had” in the House AI Task Force.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., established the House AI Task Force last February. Each of them appointed 12 members to the bipartisan task force, which submitted its comprehensive report to the House leaders in December.
The final 273-page report outlined a proposed Federal regulatory framework for AI – making over 60 key findings and more than 80 recommendations.
“The hope was that we built a base, a foundation, that future Congresses could build upon,” Rep. Beyer said of the task force.
“In the meantime, we don’t know what’s happening with the task force ‘part two.’ The thing that Mike Johnson appointed was for the last Congress,” Rep. Beyer said. “I know Democrats and Republicans have been encouraging him to do this again, but he hasn’t done it yet, and we will see.”
“Maybe because it’s early, none of the AI bills introduced last year – they’ve been all reintroduced now – have been taken up by the committees yet,” he added. “But hopefully in the next couple of months, we’ll get a bunch of them reported out.”
Rep. Beyer pointed to some “wildly bipartisan” pieces of legislation that the House AI Task Force recommended, such as the Creating Resources for Every American To Experiment with AI Act (CREATE AI Act).
The CREATE AI Act would make permanent the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) National AI Research Resource (NAIRR) pilot, which the agency officially launched in January 2024. The NAIRR is a shared national infrastructure to support the AI research community and power responsible AI use.
Rep. Jay Obernolte, R-Calif., who co-chaired the prior Congress’s House AI Task Force, said earlier this year that he is “really optimistic” about Congress’s ability to pass that bill. Notably, Rep. Obernolte is currently the only serving member of Congress with a graduate-level degree in AI.
However, at the age of 74, Rep. Beyer is pursuing a master’s degree in machine learning at George Mason University. Amid his busy schedule, Rep. Beyer said he’s finishing his eighth course and has about 10 more courses to go.
“I was so fascinated by artificial intelligence, but I understood it the way an average citizen does, and I wanted to go deeper,” Rep. Beyer said of his decision to go back to school.
Rep. Beyer said there’s a subset of about 30 House lawmakers that “dive deep on AI,” and that he believes “the rest of the Congress can build upon” as they craft legislation. “And it’s naive to think that all 435 are going to understand it,” he added.
“What we really have done – if you look at the pieces of legislation one by one – is try to anticipate the downside [of AI] and then develop legislation that will address that rather than saying, ‘Here’s a lot more money to grow AI,’” Rep. Beyer said.