European regulators are poised to adopt A.I. laws later this year, which has prompted many of the companies to encourage U.S. regulations. Several lawmakers have introduced bills that include licensing for A.I. companies to release their technologies, the creation of a federal agency to oversee the industry, and data privacy requirements. But members of Congress are far from agreement on rules and are racing to educate themselves on the technology.

Lawmakers have been grappling with how to address the ascent of A.I. technology, with some focused on risks to consumers while others are acutely concerned about falling behind adversaries, particularly China, in the race for dominance in the field.

This week, the House’s select committee on strategic competition with China sent bipartisan letters to U.S.-based venture capital firms, demanding a reckoning over investments they had made in Chinese A.I. and semiconductor companies. Those letters come on top of months in which a variety of House and Senate panels have been questioning the A.I. industry’s most influential entrepreneurs and critics to determine what sort of legislative guardrails and incentives Congress ought to be exploring.

Many of those witnesses, including Sam Altman of the San Francisco start-up OpenAI, have implored lawmakers to regulate the A.I. industry, pointing out the potential for the new technology to cause undue harm. But that regulation has been slow to get underway in Congress, where many lawmakers still struggle to grasp what exactly A.I. technology is.

In an attempt to improve lawmakers’ understanding, Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, began a series of listening sessions for lawmakers this summer, to hear from government officials and experts about the merits and dangers of artificial intelligence across a number of fields.

Mr. Schumer has also prepared an amendment to the Senate’s version of this year’s defense authorization bill to incentivize Pentagon employees to report potential issues with A.I. tools through a “bug bounty” program, commission a Pentagon report on how to improve A.I. data sharing, and improve reporting on A.I. in the financial services industry.

Karoun Demirjian contributed reporting from Washington.