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You're being too charitable to Anthropic, and assuming that the way they are abusing the word "distillation" has some real meaning here. It doesn't. Anthropic'

You're being too charitable to Anthropic, and assuming that the way they are abusing the word "distillation" has some real meaning here. It doesn't. Anthropic's models simply do not give you their reasoning output - they give a sanitized "summary" instead, for this exact reason, so that the output is not useful to anyone who might want to use it for training. You can't distill what you are not given - simple as that. Are Chinese using the output of US models to help create some additional training data for their own in some way? Yes - quite possibly (e.g. LLM as judge), but its got nothing to do with distillation.

bluegatty 3mo ago
I see your 'fine point' but I don't think it holds - 'distillation' is a perfectly reasonable term to describe the process of creating outputs from one model to that expose key training element, to use in another model. I think where the definition may be be invalid, is in the creation of 'unrelated data sets for training' models, for unrelated issues. Creating training sets that mach a models core training, is definitely distillation, it does not have to expose the reasoning traces. Synthesizing data for some arbitrary thing ... I'm not sure that would be the same thing. It's hard to draw the line. But the Chinese models are absolutely distilling - and would not be competitive without this distillation. At the same time, there's a lot of real innovation and regular building going on at the same time over there.
- HarHarVeryFunny 3mo ago
  No - you can't distill if what you are given doesn't have the thing in it that you want to distill out of it. I don't know why it's so important to you to use the word "distillation", but it's the wrong word to use. BTW OpenAI on twitter also said that Kimi 3 "cannot be explained away by distillation or anything like that". The timeline of how long it takes to train a model and when Fable was released don't even line up. This is just Anthropic as usual trying to manipulate the US government into helping them shut down competition.
  - bluegatty 3mo ago
    Distillation is absolutely - and uncontroversially - a valid term for what is happening here. This isn't really a debate, I'm not making a fine point - just check with all of the various defintions of the term. Moreover - the 'reasoning traces' are not required for distillation at all. Finally - it's entirely possible for them to have used Fable for later stage fine tuning. It's fair to be skeptical of Anthropic (and everyone else) - but this is 'distilling'.
    - HarHarVeryFunny 3mo ago
      Words have meaning - you cant just redefine them because you want to. Are reasoning traces required for distillation? Well they are if what you are trying to distill is reasoning, such as coding expertise. Do you need reasoning traces for "LLM as judge"? No, but it would be highly perverse to call that distillation when there is a more accurate name for it - LLM as judge. If you want to call use of Anthropic's redacted model outputs in any fashion that violates their terms of service (using them them to help develop anything that competes with Anthropic) as "distillation" then I can't stop you, but it reduces their claims to a joke. Finally, as noted, OpenAI (who are just as anti-Chinese as Anthropic) said that Kimi 3 can't be explained via distillation (even true distillation!!), or even "anything like it". But random internet guy, you, disagrees. OK.
      - throw10920 3mo ago
        > Words have meaning - you cant just redefine them because you want to. You are redefining words. The consensus among people who work in this space is that "distilling" is what's actually going on here. > who are just as anti-Chinese as Anthropic Conflating criticism of IP theft with being "anti-Chinese" is a standard PRC influence playbook technique. And furthermore, OpenAI's market strategy is to win through regulatory capture. They are financially incentivized for Anthropic to be distilled by PRC labs and to be undercut by open models. Their claim about Kimi not being explainable due to distillation is not a factual claim - it's marketing from a company owned by Sam Altman. Although, it does conclusively disprove your claim about the meaning of distillation, because you cannot say that "Kimi can't be explained by distilling" unless the consensus definition of "distillation" is such that it could be done on the summarized reasoning traces that Anthropic models expose.
throw10920 3mo ago
> Anthropic's models simply do not give you their reasoning output - they give a sanitized "summary" instead, for this exact reason, so that the output is not useful to anyone who might want to use it for training. This is just straight-up factually false. The output of a reasoning model is immensely valuable even without the sanitized summary of the reasoning process - that Anthropic's service does expose to you, making it even more valuable. There's absolutely nothing about the distillation process that requires that reasoning in the first place, either. That's a definition that you made up. Chinese models are, factually, distilled from Anthropic models. I've personally repeatedly asked several different Chinese LLMs what their name is, and they answered "Claude". Don't make stuff up to suit a political agenda. It's extremely dishonest.
- wasfgwp 3mo ago
  Well there were observed cases of Claude calling itself Deepseek or Qwen. So pot calling the kettle black? To be fair I find it hard to take this too seriously, shouldn’t it be trivial to just replace “Claude” with any other string in your “distillation” dataset?
  - throw10920 3mo ago
    > Well there were observed cases of Claude calling itself Deepseek or Qwen. So pot calling the kettle black? There are open-source Deepseek and Qwen models - "distilling" doesn't involve breaking terms of service or hitting an API because you can literally run local inference or even just inspect the weights directly, and that's intended because they're open source. It's categorically different for a nation-state to build massive illicit networks of fraudulent identities to do distillation over tens of thousands of accounts to intentionally bypass providers' terms of service, intention for their models, and business model that very explicitly proprietary and not open source. https://www.chinatalk.media/p/how-to-buy-cheap-claude-tokens-in https://www.chinatalk.media/p/how-to-buy-cheap-claude-tokens... If Claude did distill on proprietary PRC LLMs - then fine, shame on them - I condemn that and I expect others to do the same. But there are no open-source Claude models. The only way for PRC models to have those responses is if they distilled Anthropic's models from their APIs. > To be fair I find it hard to take this too seriously, shouldn’t it be trivial to just replace “Claude” with any other string in your “distillation” dataset? ...and what would happen when it read all of the books and articles about Anthropic and replaced "replaced Claude Opus" with "replaced Qwen Opus"? Did you give any thought to this at all before saying it?

bluegatty 3mo ago

I see your 'fine point' but I don't think it holds - 'distillation' is a perfectly reasonable term to describe the process of creating outputs from one model to that expose key training element, to use in another model. I think where the definition may be be invalid, is in the creation of 'unrelated data sets for training' models, for unrelated issues. Creating training sets that mach a models core training, is definitely distillation, it does not have to expose the reasoning traces. Synthesizing data for some arbitrary thing ... I'm not sure that would be the same thing. It's hard to draw the line. But the Chinese models are absolutely distilling - and would not be competitive without this distillation. At the same time, there's a lot of real innovation and regular building going on at the same time over there.

HarHarVeryFunny 3mo ago
No - you can't distill if what you are given doesn't have the thing in it that you want to distill out of it. I don't know why it's so important to you to use the word "distillation", but it's the wrong word to use. BTW OpenAI on twitter also said that Kimi 3 "cannot be explained away by distillation or anything like that". The timeline of how long it takes to train a model and when Fable was released don't even line up. This is just Anthropic as usual trying to manipulate the US government into helping them shut down competition.
- bluegatty 3mo ago
  Distillation is absolutely - and uncontroversially - a valid term for what is happening here. This isn't really a debate, I'm not making a fine point - just check with all of the various defintions of the term. Moreover - the 'reasoning traces' are not required for distillation at all. Finally - it's entirely possible for them to have used Fable for later stage fine tuning. It's fair to be skeptical of Anthropic (and everyone else) - but this is 'distilling'.
  - HarHarVeryFunny 3mo ago
    Words have meaning - you cant just redefine them because you want to. Are reasoning traces required for distillation? Well they are if what you are trying to distill is reasoning, such as coding expertise. Do you need reasoning traces for "LLM as judge"? No, but it would be highly perverse to call that distillation when there is a more accurate name for it - LLM as judge. If you want to call use of Anthropic's redacted model outputs in any fashion that violates their terms of service (using them them to help develop anything that competes with Anthropic) as "distillation" then I can't stop you, but it reduces their claims to a joke. Finally, as noted, OpenAI (who are just as anti-Chinese as Anthropic) said that Kimi 3 can't be explained via distillation (even true distillation!!), or even "anything like it". But random internet guy, you, disagrees. OK.
    - throw10920 3mo ago
      > Words have meaning - you cant just redefine them because you want to. You are redefining words. The consensus among people who work in this space is that "distilling" is what's actually going on here. > who are just as anti-Chinese as Anthropic Conflating criticism of IP theft with being "anti-Chinese" is a standard PRC influence playbook technique. And furthermore, OpenAI's market strategy is to win through regulatory capture. They are financially incentivized for Anthropic to be distilled by PRC labs and to be undercut by open models. Their claim about Kimi not being explainable due to distillation is not a factual claim - it's marketing from a company owned by Sam Altman. Although, it does conclusively disprove your claim about the meaning of distillation, because you cannot say that "Kimi can't be explained by distilling" unless the consensus definition of "distillation" is such that it could be done on the summarized reasoning traces that Anthropic models expose.

throw10920 3mo ago

> Anthropic's models simply do not give you their reasoning output - they give a sanitized "summary" instead, for this exact reason, so that the output is not useful to anyone who might want to use it for training. This is just straight-up factually false. The output of a reasoning model is immensely valuable even without the sanitized summary of the reasoning process - that Anthropic's service does expose to you, making it even more valuable. There's absolutely nothing about the distillation process that requires that reasoning in the first place, either. That's a definition that you made up. Chinese models are, factually, distilled from Anthropic models. I've personally repeatedly asked several different Chinese LLMs what their name is, and they answered "Claude". Don't make stuff up to suit a political agenda. It's extremely dishonest.

wasfgwp 3mo ago
Well there were observed cases of Claude calling itself Deepseek or Qwen. So pot calling the kettle black? To be fair I find it hard to take this too seriously, shouldn’t it be trivial to just replace “Claude” with any other string in your “distillation” dataset?
- throw10920 3mo ago
  > Well there were observed cases of Claude calling itself Deepseek or Qwen. So pot calling the kettle black? There are open-source Deepseek and Qwen models - "distilling" doesn't involve breaking terms of service or hitting an API because you can literally run local inference or even just inspect the weights directly, and that's intended because they're open source. It's categorically different for a nation-state to build massive illicit networks of fraudulent identities to do distillation over tens of thousands of accounts to intentionally bypass providers' terms of service, intention for their models, and business model that very explicitly proprietary and not open source. https://www.chinatalk.media/p/how-to-buy-cheap-claude-tokens-in https://www.chinatalk.media/p/how-to-buy-cheap-claude-tokens... If Claude did distill on proprietary PRC LLMs - then fine, shame on them - I condemn that and I expect others to do the same. But there are no open-source Claude models. The only way for PRC models to have those responses is if they distilled Anthropic's models from their APIs. > To be fair I find it hard to take this too seriously, shouldn’t it be trivial to just replace “Claude” with any other string in your “distillation” dataset? ...and what would happen when it read all of the books and articles about Anthropic and replaced "replaced Claude Opus" with "replaced Qwen Opus"? Did you give any thought to this at all before saying it?