Knowing this, I think about another question. Is it reasonably possible to steer the direction or speed of advancement of technology, or is this scenario just the inevitable result of a society that continually iterates on past technology without end? I recall the demo video of that first person shooter a few months ago that people were saying was real life footage because it looked realistic enough. And once it was clear it was from a game engine with realism crossing a new threshold, some people raised concerns that the footage resembled police body camera footage and could perpetuate negative stereotypes. But a desire for more realism has persisted for the past several decades with the improvements in each console generation, graphics cards and so on, so it's hard to believe how the logical conclusion of more computing power doesn't converge to "police body camera footage simulator" at some point. At the next year's E3 it went unsaid that the graphics of the game titles on display would be slightly better and coverage at least a miniscule amount closer to those of real life, without a clearly defined end in sight. So what were we expecting to happen?
I think it is interesting that in the case of media that is known to be fictional like video games, we now have to grapple with the novel question of how realistic is too realistic, all because we found out enough ways to make it realistic enough. What was once an implicit and invisible barrier mediated by the lack of advanced technology has become an ethical barrier that relies on persons refusing to use the technology for the harm it causes.
Sometimes I liken the outcome to spicy peppers. I can imagine that at some point the spiciest pepper yet will be engineered such that an average person ingesting one will encounter severe health problems. And yet we can't help but ask the question of "how spicy we can go," so until that limit is reached we keep going. The question of harm that such a pepper could inflict is drowned out by the question of what stones humankind have still left unturned. Somehow we can't stop turning them.
But unlike peppers, the results of these technologies will affect people that aren't interested in the question, and they will still be affected without any say in the matter.