How Effective Is Distillation From Peer Models?

maxsloef · x · 2026-07-18

The author poses a training/distillation question: if you have two similarly performing pre-trained models, post-train one normally, and use its rollouts to distill the other, how closely can the latter match the former's performance?

Drawing parallels to relationships between certain models, they want to verify if "distilling from a close peer rather than a stronger teacher" remains effective, and exactly what performance level it can ultimately reach.

Related event: Exploring Peer Distillation and Post-Training Between Equal Models(2 posts)→

Original post →

More from Models

Models channel →