The Distillation Debate Around Chinese AI Models Resurfaces

madeofAjala · x · 2026-07-18

A debate has emerged over the claim that "Chinese models are merely distilling US models." The original poster argues that this view is overly simplistic; achieving current capabilities post-DeepSeek R1 would be highly unlikely through knowledge distillation alone. Replies specifically mentioning GLM-5.2 and Kimi-3 echo this, stating that attributing Chinese AI progress simply to "distilling US models" is a lazy narrative that obscures the genuine contributions being made.

Related event: Chinese Models Challenge the 'Distillation Only' Stereotype(3 posts)→

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