It's real hard for me to conjure up "good" uses for, say, mustard gas or bioweapons or nuclear warheads.

"Technology is neutral" is a cop-out and should be seen as such. People should, at the very least, try to ask how people / society will make use of a technology and ask whether it should be developed/promoted.

We are all-too-often over-optimistic about how things will be used or position them being used in the best possible light rather than being realistic in how things will be used.

In a perfect world, people might only use AI responsibly and in ways that largely benefit mankind. We don't live in that perfect world, and it is/was predictable that AI would be used in the worst ways more than it's used in beneficial ones.

While this is true, the horrific usage of a tool can vastly outweigh pitifully minimal benefits.

I'm not implying those adjectives apply to AI, but merely presenting a worse case scenario.

Dismissing the question of "does this benefit us?" with "it's just a tool" evokes Jurassic Park for me.

But not in equal quantity. Technology does not exist in a contextless void. Approaching technology with this sort of moral solipsism is horrifying, in my opinion.

I strongly disagree. Many technologies aren't neutral, with their virtue dependent on the use given them. Some technologies are close to neutral, but there are many that are either 1) designed for evil or 2) very vulnerable to misuse. For some of the latter, it'd be best if they'd never even been invented. An example of each kind of technology:

1) Rolling coal. It's hard for me to envision a publicly-available form of this technology that is virtuous. It sounds like it's mostly used to harass people and exert unmerited, abusive power over others. Hardly a morally-neutral technology.

2) Fentanyl. It surely has helpful uses, but maybe its misuse is so problematic that humanity might be significantly better off without the existence of this drug.

Maybe AI is morally neutral, but maybe it isn't.

Right. But a machine that helps plant seeds at scale could be used for bad by running someone over, but it's core purpose it to do something helpful. AI's core purpose isn't to do anything good right now. It's about how many jobs it can take, how many artists can it steal from and put out of work, and so on and so on. How many people die from computer mice each year? How many from guns? They're both technology and can be used for good or bad. To hand wave the difference away is dangerous and naive.

We have very little idea what is "good or bad," especially over the long term.