Generated Source Mirror

This page is generated from the source Markdown file so it can be viewed inside the MkDocs site.

• Source path: knowledge/people/PERSON-DON-BEYER.md
• Source ID: PERSON-DON-BEYER
• Edit this page | Suggest a change

📝 Page Status: Draft — sourced but not yet reviewed

• Status: draft
• Sources: 4
• Relationships: 4
• Research debt items: 3

---

Don Beyer

Summary

Don Beyer is a U.S. Representative from Virginia who co-chairs the Congressional Artificial Intelligence Caucus, served on the House AI Task Force, and introduced the AI Foundation Model Transparency Act.

Verified Facts

• Official House biography states that Beyer represents Virginia's 8th District, serves on Ways and Means and the Joint Economic Committee, was Virginia lieutenant governor (1990–1998), and served as Ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein.¹
• The Congressional AI Caucus site lists Donald S. Beyer (VA-08) as a co-chair.²
• Beyer's office describes him as co-chair of the Congressional AI Caucus, a member of the Speaker/Leader AI Task Force, and author of the AI Foundation Model Transparency Act with Reps. Mike Lawler and Sara Jacobs.³
• Obernolte's Task Force page lists Beyer among the 24 members.⁴

Key Legislation and Oversight

• Congressional AI Caucus (co-chair) — see ORG-CONGRESSIONAL-AI-CAUCUS.
• AI Foundation Model Transparency Act (H.R. 8094) — would direct the FTC to set public transparency standards for foundation-model training data, training methods, capabilities, and inference-time user-data collection.

Historical Context

Beyer is a House AI-caucus institutionalist: transparency and task-force process rather than a development pause. His office also states he has pursued master's coursework in machine learning at George Mason University to inform that work; that claim is self-reported.

Relevance to Open Source and Software Companies

FTC foundation-model transparency rules would reach both closed APIs and high-impact open-weight releases depending on how "foundation model" and "deployer" are defined. Small-deployer and researcher exceptions, as described by Beyer's office, are the live drafting issue for independent evals and fine-tunes.

Relationships

• PERSON-DON-BEYER cites SRC-BEYER-BIO.
• PERSON-DON-BEYER cites SRC-BEYER-AI-TRANSPARENCY.
• PERSON-DON-BEYER affiliated_with ORG-CONGRESSIONAL-AI-CAUCUS.
• PERSON-DON-BEYER affiliated_with ORG-HOUSE-AI-TASK-FORCE.

Sources

1. SRC-BEYER-BIO: Biography | U.S. Representative Don Beyer.
2. SRC-HOUSE-AI-CAUCUS: Congressional Artificial Intelligence Caucus.
3. SRC-BEYER-AI-TRANSPARENCY: Beyer, Lawler, Jacobs Introduce Bipartisan Legislation to Promote AI Foundation Model Transparency.
4. SRC-HOUSE-AI-TASK-FORCE-2024: The House Task Force on Artificial Intelligence Final Report.

Research Debt

• Add Congress.gov / GPO text for H.R. 8094 as its own source record.
• Document Beyer's 2026 letters on frontier-model incidents from primary House releases.
• Corroborate GMU coursework claim with an independent source.

Document metadata

• Last verified: 2026-09-17

---

1. SRC-BEYER-BIO — Biography | U.S. Representative Don Beyer. Official House biography; self-reported. ↩

2. SRC-HOUSE-AI-CAUCUS — Official House caucus website. ↩

3. SRC-BEYER-AI-TRANSPARENCY — Official House press release. Congress.gov records H.R. 8094 introduced 2026-03-26. ↩

4. SRC-HOUSE-AI-TASK-FORCE-2024 — Official House Task Force announcement page. ↩