【Arnold Reyes Archives】

Governing is Arnold Reyes Archiveshard. Predicting what the, ahem, disjointed members of Congress are going to do on any given day is even harder.

So why not give your noggin a little rest and let artificial intelligence do it for you?

Enter PredictGov, a website that uses machine learning to try and determine the future of congressional bills. Will they pass? Won't they? Now you can spend your time only freaking out about, say, the erosion of your privacy thanks to Congress, instead of all the additional garbage that may or may not get signed into law.

Pretty neat, huh? (As an added bonus, all that extra cognitive space will come in handy as you prep for the inevitable eco-apocalypse).

The brainchild of Vanderbilt University law Professor J.B. Ruhl and computer scientist and doctoral candidate John Nay, PredictGov is more than just some rando-pundit dude's attempt to sound smart on cable TV.

There's datain them thar hills.

"It pulls from decades of congressional data plus hundreds of variables, including the bill’s sponsor, amendments, economic trends and political shifts," reads a press release. "Each bill’s score updates every 24 hours, accounting for amendments that jump on or off."

But what, other than the aforementioned aid in disaster prep, is this service good for? Well, potentially a lot.

"Based on our deep learning A.I. system, we provide updated predictions for the bills currently under consideration, assigning each a chance of being enacted," the website explains. "This freely available resource allows you to focus on legislation that is likely to matter and offers a glimpse into the power of our more advanced subscription-based tools."

In other words, it could save you from lobbying against the latest congressional monstrosity that has little-to-no chance of passing and allow you to focus on one that does.

As to the accuracy of PredictGov's predictions? It may be too early to say for sure, but either way it lets you outsource one more cognitive task. And that, in these confounding times, is a big ole plus.

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