OpenAI staffer says distillation matters more than he thought, drawing 'double game' criticism
stanfordnlp · x · 2026-10-19
Dean Ball, an OpenAI staffer, says that after joining the company he realized distillation likely plays a bigger role than he thought in explaining why Chinese labs trail the US so closely on benchmarks.
Ziv Ravid pushed back hard, accusing OpenAI and Anthropic of a double game: claiming massive distillation by Chinese labs proves they're far behind and justifies restrictions, while refusing to publish any evidence — no detection methods, benchmarks, or estimates of distillation scale. He argues companies have always copied each other (including these two labs themselves) and that demands to 'trust us' are not a fair basis for blocking competitors.
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