While I think general awareness of ethics concerns is needed, I think it might also sometimes bias research directions in itself.
I.e., dealing with ethics concerns and/or ethics committees becomes a huge additional workload in itself, so the research is prioritized to minimize dealing with it.
For example, one might stop a research which might help to treat cancer but dealing with the necessary approvals for patient data makes it unfeasible. Instead you switch to a general purpose target domain where it suddenly (unintentionally) could be used for war instead, but being general purpose it does not need to be approved by the ethics committee..
I.e., dealing with ethics concerns and/or ethics committees becomes a huge additional workload in itself, so the research is prioritized to minimize dealing with it.
For example, one might stop a research which might help to treat cancer but dealing with the necessary approvals for patient data makes it unfeasible. Instead you switch to a general purpose target domain where it suddenly (unintentionally) could be used for war instead, but being general purpose it does not need to be approved by the ethics committee..