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  • Sources: 3
  • Relationships: 3
  • Research debt items: 3

Jay Obernolte

Summary

Jay Obernolte is a U.S. Representative from California who chairs the House Bipartisan Task Force on Artificial Intelligence, co-chairs the Congressional AI Caucus, and holds an M.S. in artificial intelligence from UCLA.

Verified Facts

  • Official House biography states that Obernolte represents California's 23rd District, serves on Energy and Commerce and as Chairman of the Science Committee's Research and Technology Subcommittee, and holds a B.S. from Caltech, an M.S. in Artificial Intelligence from UCLA, and a Doctorate in Public Administration from California Baptist University.1
  • The same biography describes him as a video-game developer and business owner and states he is "currently the only serving member of Congress with a graduate-level degree in AI."1
  • The Congressional AI Caucus site lists Jay Obernolte (CA-23) as a co-chair.2
  • Obernolte's office states that he chaired the 118th Congress House Bipartisan Task Force on Artificial Intelligence with Co-Chair Ted Lieu and that the Task Force issued a final report after nearly 10 months of work.3

Key Legislation and Oversight

Historical Context

Obernolte is the House Republican technical lead on AI: caucus co-chair, task-force chair, and a graduate AI degree. The 2024 Task Force report's published framing is U.S. leadership plus guardrails, not a development moratorium.

Relevance to Open Source and Software Companies

As Research and Technology subcommittee chair and Energy and Commerce member, Obernolte sits at the overlap of NIST standards, FTC-adjacent consumer issues, and federal R&D that open-weight research depends on. The Task Force report is the House counterpart to the Senate AI Working Group roadmap.

Relationships

  • PERSON-JAY-OBERNOLTE cites SRC-OBERNOLTE-BIO.
  • PERSON-JAY-OBERNOLTE affiliated_with ORG-CONGRESSIONAL-AI-CAUCUS.
  • PERSON-JAY-OBERNOLTE affiliated_with ORG-HOUSE-AI-TASK-FORCE.

Sources

  1. SRC-OBERNOLTE-BIO: About | Representative Jay Obernolte.
  2. SRC-HOUSE-AI-CAUCUS: Congressional Artificial Intelligence Caucus.
  3. SRC-HOUSE-AI-TASK-FORCE-2024: The House Task Force on Artificial Intelligence Final Report.

Research Debt

  • Corroborate the "only serving member with a graduate-level AI degree" claim independently.
  • Add Speaker-office PDF of the Task Force report as a dedicated source with section-level citations.
  • Document current 119th Congress committee titles against Clerk listings.

Document metadata

  • Last verified: 2026-09-17

  1. SRC-OBERNOLTE-BIO — About | Representative Jay Obernolte. Official House biography; self-reported. ↩↩

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

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