Why Do (Some) Chinese AI Labs Distill? - by Kevin Xu

And why the Mythos/Fable drama doesn’t matter here

Ever since Anthropic released its report in February on three Chinese AI labs distilling its advanced models to train their own, I have been thinking a lot about adversarial distillation. I carried my thoughts to China, when I recently visited most of the leading labs there, including the three being accused. I tracked how the issue has evolved quickly into action and legislative proposals in Washington. I have monitored (the situation) of a growing narrative uttered by many that China, the entire country, distills (coded for steals) to make progress in AI, not three labs out of many from…

saved by

• Yilin

related reading

• What we learned from 1,604 Chinese AI job postingsepoch.ai
• Notes from inside China's AI labs - by Nathan Lambertinterconnects.ai
• The Incentive Architecture Export Controls Cannot Reach | Lawfarelawfaremedia.org
• How to Buy Cheap Claude Tokens in Chinachinatalk.media
• How (some) Chinese AI Practitioners View Model Distillationgeopolitechs.org
• The Moonshot - by Anton Leicht - Threading the Needlewriting.antonleicht.me
• Detecting and preventing distillation attacks \ Anthropicanthropic.com
• White House’s Response to China Lacks Confidence in Americathealgorithmicbridge.com
• Dario Amodei — On DeepSeek and Export Controlsdarioamodei.com
• 2028: Two scenarios for global AI leadership \ Anthropicanthropic.com
• Who’s Afraid of Chinese Models? – Stratechery by Ben Thompsonstratechery.com
• The AI Race Just Got Awkward | insufferable.devinsufferable.dev