Where's the binding part of that? In a world where they just remove the language that says they won't work with the military at all, what reassurance should a verbal promise by a VP provide?
Assume that the parenthetical "(... for now)" is implied in all such promises.
Tricky situation for sure. I don't like war or weapons personally but they are a reality. Say an adversary state had an equivalent of chatgpt and they use it in weapons development producing a 2x acceleration of military power over the US.
The binding is coming from inside the building, so to speak. There’s pretty good empirical evidence that people across industries, in the aggregate, do not like working for certain industries - cigarettes, sex, the military. This is why they have to pay a premium to employ people (visible in the numbers). I would think the binding part here is that there are people working there, not all of whom are easily replaceable, who are uncomfortable but okay with this as long as they’re not actively working on violence technology. If that changes, they will enforce the “penalty” by leaving.
Assume that the parenthetical "(... for now)" is implied in all such promises.