Comment by throw10920

> Companies like Anthropic spent millions building those fine-tuning examples. A follower can shortcut that on both cost and time by distilling, and it will keep happening: every time the frontier lab climbs higher, others will find a way to shortcut the new gap.

The generalization of this is: technologically advanced societies only continue to function as long as you prevent people from circumventing the technological business model (initial R&D investment that is recouped by selling units of the product above their manufacturing cost) by stealing your R&D (allowing them to sell units based on manufacturing cost alone, because they externalized their R&D to you).

This means both taking action against malicious actors inside your system of governance (IP laws in your country) and outside of it (sanctions, internet blocks, ITAR restrictions).

An honest competitor is perfectly capable of competing on price without stealing IP - see Mistral and that newer EU model that's trained on actually licensed content.

And I agree - we want a wide variety of models, from less-capable (but far cheaper) to those that maximize intelligence at any cost.

But those advocating for China distilling US models are just advocating for wealth transfer from the latter to the former - and highly likely to be 50 cent party members.