This paper investigates early legislative deliberations over Artificial Intelligence in the United States through a thematic analysis of the 2023-2024 Oversight of AI hearings held by the Senate Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law. I focus on these hearings as a site where participants draw from, and renegotiate, accustomed ways of thinking about technology and society. First, I examine how participants, who overwhelmingly represent the technology industry, work to create narratives for understanding the past, present, and future impacts of AI. Second, I examine how these narratives are invoked to argue for particular forms of AI governance, while casting alternative approaches as everything from infeasible to anti-American. By tracing industry influence over dominant understandings of the impacts of AI and the proper role of government, I examine the arrangements of power enacted and upheld through these hearings. In all, I ask: what role to shared (mis)understandings of AI play in early attempts at governing this technology?

翻译：本文通过对美国参议院司法委员会隐私、技术与法律小组委员会在2023-2024年间举行的人工智能监督听证会进行主题分析，研究了美国早期关于人工智能的立法审议。我将这些听证会视为一个场域，参与者在此借鉴并重新协商关于技术与社会的惯常思维方式。首先，我考察了以压倒性比例代表科技行业的参与者如何努力构建理解人工智能过去、现在及未来影响的叙事。其次，我分析了这些叙事如何被援引以论证特定形式的人工智能治理，同时将其他路径描绘为从不可行到反美式的各种负面形象。通过追溯行业对人工智能影响的主流理解及政府适当角色的主导性影响，我审视了通过这些听证会所确立并维护的权力安排。总而言之，本文提出核心问题：对人工智能的共识（与误解）在早期治理该技术的尝试中扮演何种角色？