I understand the concern about your work being used to cause harm, but I also worry about the development of 'forbidden knowledge'. What does it mean to say a branch of science and engineering is too dangerous of a path to go down? Does it mean scientists are persecuted just for asking questions and designing experiments to find answers? Will there be witch hunts against ML researchers? Part of teaching is trusting your students to use the learnings wisely.

This isn't the first. What did it mean for human embryonic gene editing?

What is your basis for calling them "witch hunts" rather than "criminal prosecutions"? (The prosecutions would start only after the passage of a new law making the questions and experiments illegal.)

If you work at a defense contractor on warplanes, radar systems or nuclear weapons and you are too free in how you teach or write about your professional knowledge, you go to prison, and it has been that way in the US continuously since WWII. Criminal prosecutions are relatively rare because security-clearance background investigations filter out most of the job applicants who would go on to violate the laws.

There's a lot of very dangerous scientific work that gets done because we've put safety measures in place to protect workers and the public to the best of our ability. This allows the dangerous work to be done as safely as possible.

"AI" is being worked on and funded by sociopaths who care about money over all else and have demonstrated that they are willing to hurt others in exchange for more of it. There are no rules or protections for anybody anywhere. In fact AI companies are pouring bribe money into our corrupt political system in an effort to remove or avoid anything that would stop them from doing whatever they want.