Dean Ball: distillation likely explains ~50% of Chinese labs' close-behind pace
deanwball · x · 2026-10-18
In a reply to Elie Bakouch, Dean Ball estimates that distillation explains roughly 30% of Chinese labs' close-behindness relative to frontier models — but after seeing what can be observed from within OpenAI, he revised that estimate upward to around 50%. A substantive exchange on how much distillation drives Chinese frontier catch-up.
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