Fox News chief political anchor Bret Baier has the latest on the pros and cons of the bombshell developments on'Special Report.' It is said that predicting the future isn't magic. If that's the case, perhaps we should ask AI when Congress might pass a bill to regulate the emerging technology – before it spirals out of control. There's a push by Congressional leaders to approve a bill regulating AI when lawmakers return to Washington after the election. But the path to passage - and developing a consensus on establishing guardrails for AI - is far from certain.

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.

Rep. Jay Obernolte was selected to lead the House task force on AI. Fox News Digital speaks with the California Republican about his goals for the panel and his own thoughts about the rapidly advancing technology. EXCLUSIVE: The chairman of the House of Representatives' new AI Task Force said his panel will likely hold hearings on artificial intelligence as Congress seeks to get ahead of the rapidly advancing technology. "Our number one task is to, by the end of the year, issue a report that details a regulatory framework for artificial intelligence. That framework is going to have a number of different pillars. And those pillars will come out of the things that our task force members are concerned about," Rep. Jay Obernolte, R-Calif., told Fox News Digital.

Congress might consider new legislation on artificial intelligence and its effect on elections this year, according to the chair of the House of Representatives' new AI task force. "I do hope that we're going to be able to get started on actually creating and passing some legislation. I think that we're fortunate that there are some things that are very pressing on AI, but there's other things that relate to medium-term and long-term threats that don't need to be acted on immediately," Rep. Jay Obernolte, R-Calif., told Fox News Digital in an interview. "But those short-term threats, I think we can mitigate those this year and I'm hopeful that the task force – we'll be able to get that done." Asked to elaborate on short-term legislative goals, Obernolte said, "We have an election coming up – the use of AI to spread myths and disparate information about candidates, I think, is something we should all be able to agree is not only a bad thing for society, but something that could be a threat to people's trust in our democracy."

Kara Frederick, tech director at the Heritage Foundation, discusses the need for regulations on artificial intelligence as lawmakers and tech titans discuss the potential risks. The vice chair of Congress' artificial intelligence caucus says privacy regulations need to be a top short-term priority for Congress as Washington looks to get to grips with the rapidly emerging technology – which he says poses risks, but could be a catalyst for the next expansion of the U.S. economy. Rep. Jay Obernolte, R-Calif., told Fox News Digital in an interview that he is an optimist when it comes to the potential for artificial intelligence, but Congress needs to make sure it is protecting Americans from the potential negatives and disruption that AI brings. "I think in the short term, the ability of AI to pierce through digital data privacy and to re-aggregate data that has supposedly been disaggregated and use it to create behavioral models that could be used to influence behavior, that's very concerning, and that's something that the government definitely needs to play a role in mitigating," Obernolte said. Rep. Jay Obernolte has a graduate degree in artificial intelligence.

FOX Business correspondent Lydia Hu has the latest on jobs at risk as AI further develops on'America's Newsroom.' The only member of Congress with an advanced degree in artificial intelligence says lawmakers should move slowly to impose new regulations on AI, in part because policymakers and even experts in the field have yet to lay out clear regulatory objectives. Rep. Jay Obernolte, R-Calif., says this deliberate approach is a good thing, despite pressure from high-profile tech leaders to halt AI development until its dangers are better understood. In an interview with Fox News Digital, Obernolte said it makes no sense to start regulating until Congress knows precisely what dangers it's trying to avoid. "Before we can create a regulatory framework around AI, we have to very explicit about what our goals are with our regulation," Obernolte said.

Congress has never been the quickest off the mark when it comes to making laws dealing with technology. Now, even as AI takes over creative writing and art, Congress continues to sit idle. As legislators endeavor to comprehend generative AI programs such as Microsoft Bing, ChatGPT and Google Bard, some of the more technology-oriented lawmakers are apprehensive about a repeat of Congress's unpreparedness in responding to the previous major tech wave -- social media. Worries, however, don't appear to be leading to action. True, there's a backlash now for letting tech companies keep Washington at arm's length with promises of "self-regulation" on critical issues such as privacy protection, child safety, disinformation, cryptocurrency, and data portability.

Fox News contributor Karl Rove reacts to Trump blasting the media and Big Tech for being'massively corrupt.' WASHINGTON – Congressman-elect Jay Obernolte, a 50-year-old who is a video game developer by trade, will be a bit of an outlier in Congress. That's because members of Congress are not necessarily known as a technologically savvy bunch. This reputation has been earned by many awkward moments and stumbles by members when discussing tech, including in a 2018 hearing when Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., told Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, "I use your apparatus often," referring to Google, the search engine. But Obernolte – whose company FarSight Studios creates games for a variety of platforms ranging from PlayStation to iOS – said that, with the right approach, Congress can and should effectively address major tech issues ranging from net neutrality to Section 230. "I actually think that sometimes we get caught up in jargon from a technological standpoint, which is not helpful because I don't think the technology is unapproachable," he told Fox News in an interview.