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I think he means that the field of ML has been built in part from Gauss's work on algebra and statistics, not that the author is related to Gauss himself.

The criticism is along the lines of "Yeah basically all fields are academic descendants of Gauss. Euler too." The article's aside is just odd, as is in the first place bringing up Gauss (linking to another Guardian article, maybe the real intent?) and an astronomer both paying another dude (some amount) what sounds like club member fees for letter redistribution.

It's just a literary segue from their oldest known closed-access publication to the modern day.

A small nitpick. Nobody alive is a descendant of Julius Caesar.

Not a "legitimate" descendant, whatever that means after 60 generations.

However, he was an aristocrat, and a soldier, in a time when birth control was rarely practiced. I imagine he's got plenty of his DNA in the modern pool.