WASHINGTON — Don Beyer’s car dealerships were among the first in the U.S. to set up a website. As a representative, the Northern 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 highlights a broader effort by members of Congress to educate themselves about AI as they consider laws that would shape its development.