Garry Tan backs $1M distillation research as open-weight restrictions loom

garrytan · x · 2026-07-25

Garry Tan quotes Suhail’s view that distillation is just a research technique, neither inherently good nor bad.
Suhail argues that if governments or companies restrict open-weight models, the community will respond with more distillation research to make models more data- and compute-efficient.
He frames it as a Streisand effect: attempts to limit access could accelerate the very techniques people use to work around those limits.
Tan adds that he would fund strong researchers with $1M to run experiments and then openly release the results.

More from AGI Musings