Probably the best thing they've done in years.
I imagine somewhen in the early 1940s there was a person who said the same thing about Manhattan Project. "Good they fired all those whiners splitting hairs about some ethics thing instead of splitting atoms like they're supposed to."
Then the project was done, and the bombs fell, and two cities got flattened, and 80 years later, America - and by extension, the entire western culture - still hasn't recovered from guilt and self-inflicted trauma.
As a kid, I had to study literature at school that dealt more or less directly with the atomic bombs, with the major theme being the ethics of scientific discovery. I imagine everyone going to a public school somewhere, across couple generations up an down from me, had this experience too. Later as an adult, I've also seen other works of art covering this topic. And I keep seeing reasonable people constantly quoting that bullshit meme from a dinosaur movie - "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should."
All in all, I think it's broadly accepted that some ethical oversight over powerful technologies is warranted. But I guess not over technologies we find fascinating, or think we can make a career in.