Kinda cool and very meta if Chinese AI companies are using distillation to liberate model value from US investment driven AI companies, by then releasing models created with distillation for free. Its circular IP and copyright avoidance and potential model improvement all the way down.

Parallels to how China bootstrapped their state manufacturing capacity with Western company joint ventures contributing capital and know how, and then gave them the boot once they no longer needed them.

O no! China is plundering the very plunder we worked very hard to plunder from everyone on earth.