  Recent progress in artificial intelligence (AI) raises a wide array of
ethical and societal concerns. Accordingly, an appropriate policy approach is
needed today. While there has been a wave of scholarship in this field, the
research community at times appears divided amongst those who emphasize
near-term concerns, and those focusing on long-term concerns and corresponding
policy measures. In this paper, we seek to map and critically examine this
alleged gulf, with a view to understanding the practical space for
inter-community collaboration on AI policy. This culminates in a proposal to
make use of the legal notion of an incompletely theorized agreement. We propose
that on certain issue areas, scholars working with near-term and long-term
perspectives can converge and cooperate on selected mutually beneficial AI
policy projects all the while maintaining divergent perspectives.
