Building ML systems that are difficult to misuse is underexplored, and Timnit is one of the relatively few researchers actively doing work in this area.
I'm intrigued by this. Any names (projects/people/protocols) come to mind?
I'd call them both examples of applied cryptography research. I think these projects compare very, very closely to applied ML research:
They come out of industry research labs, are worked on by respected experts, usually involving some academics, ultimately you end up with an artifact beyond just a paper that is useful for something and improves upon the status quo.
I'm admittedly not a total expert, so I don't know how far down to the level of crypto "primitives" this kind of work goes, but I believe there is some effort to pick primitives that are difficult to "mess up" (think "bad primes") and I know tink actively prevents you from making bad choices in the cases where you are forced to make a choice.
Even more broadly, just consider any tptacek (who I should clarify is *not a researcher, lest he correct me) post on pgp/gpg email, or people like Matt Green (http://mattsmith.de/pdfs/DevelopersAreNotTheEnemy.pdf).
Edit: Some poking around also brought up this person: https://yaseminacar.de/, who has some interesting papers on similar subjects.
That doesn't mean what you think it means.
Should cryptography researchers backdoor their own papers, because terrorists or pedophiles might use it?