  Dual use, the intentional, harmful reuse of technology and scientific
artefacts, is a problem yet to be well-defined within the context of Natural
Language Processing (NLP). However, as NLP technologies continue to advance and
become increasingly widespread in society, their inner workings have become
increasingly opaque. Therefore, understanding dual use concerns and potential
ways of limiting them is critical to minimising the potential harms of research
and development. In this paper, we conduct a survey of NLP researchers and
practitioners to understand the depth and their perspective of the problem as
well as to assess existing available support. Based on the results of our
survey, we offer a definition of dual use that is tailored to the needs of the
NLP community. The survey revealed that a majority of researchers are concerned
about the potential dual use of their research but only take limited action
toward it. In light of the survey results, we discuss the current state and
potential means for mitigating dual use in NLP and propose a checklist that can
be integrated into existing conference ethics-frameworks, e.g., the ACL ethics
checklist.
