Kenny :
Distillation is merely the final step in training large language models (LLMs); it is not a core part of the process. In both China and the US, the truly critical elements of model training are pre-training, data curation, data engineering, and model architecture.
To understand who leads in these areas, you only need to look at the quality, quantity, and citation counts of research papers. You will find that many researchers, even those in the US, are of Chinese descent. DeepSeek's innovative open-source papers are a perfect example of this foundational work.
In contrast, distillation is considered a lower-tier technique. Its purpose is twofold:
1. To create a series of "small but beautiful" models based on a primary, powerful model.
2. To align a model with other high-performing models on the market.
Chinese models utilize distillation from American models, but the reverse is also true. For instance, when Claude Opus was first released, it would sometimes identify itself as GPT or DeepSeek when prompted about its identity, which shows how prevalent distillation is across the board.
2026-07-11 02:25:46