To draw an analogy, we're generally OK with law enforcement using what they observe in public to enforce the law, but we're generally not OK with blanketing our public spaces in 24/7 recording cameras. We're generally OK with individuals using the mail to send letters, but generally not OK with using an automated system to send a letter to everyone in the entire city.
Similarly, we don't generally try to pre-empt someone's speech for safety and we do allow them to say bad things, and perhaps in retrospect punish them if they crossed a line. But, given the scale of the harms that this kind of technology can enable, it may be worth building in safeties to prevent people using technology to like I dunno, train a model to super specifically target an individual for an incredible amount of harassment that an individual human could not sustain. Even if we could punish the person wielding the AI retroactively, it might be worth the slight cost in AI flexibility to prevent the harm happening in the first place.
Like I said, I don't know where I fall, but I see both sides here. The safety stuff is not completely irrational.