Ex-researcher: labs willing to cheat/distill ship great models faster than those building self-sufficient stacks
_aidan_clark_ · x · 2026-10-16
Aidan Clark argues that the difficulty of pretraining is evident in how much faster labs willing to cheat, bootstrap, or distill reach great models, compared to those insisting on fully self-sufficient stacks — adding it's "a rare Microsoft compliment."
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