I’m not concerned about it and I don’t think that it’s something that should be gatekept tbh. There are experts in their fields who aren’t autistic who would absolutely meet the (honestly kinda vague and undefined) criteria of having a special interest.

At the risk of starting a struggle session, I strongly dislike the term special interest entirely and I reject using it except where it’s necessary or when someone else is using it to refer to their own stuff because it’s not my place to step on someone else’s identity. The reason that I dislike it is because the disabled community overwhelmingly rejects the term special needs because it’s stigmatising and pathologising.

While special interests is much more positive, the connotations of “special” used in this context still directly apply to this imo. It’s also an example of euphemising, just like the term special needs does - at least saying high support needs is descriptive and relatively neutral with regards to value judgements.