Meng Shao questions the evidence behind claims about Chinese labs distilling Fable

A big Chinese lab reached out to me asking for help distilling Fable into their model. I said no. I told them to use the millions of books that have no copyright instead. Offered to help pick them and to help train the model a different way. They only wanted distillation, which tells you a lot about the mindset there. I've worked deep in this field and distillation is real. I wasn't convinced at one point. What I saw changed my mind completely. I'm the biggest supporter of open source. I'm for releasing weights and for the freedom to research and build, because humanity only grows when knowledge gets shared. But let's be logical. Nobody will convince me that labs shipping a model every month or less, each one a big leap, now can't ship a better one after three months. Kimi K3.1 Pro isn't a big leap over Kimi K3 and it's been about 100 days. DeepSeek still can't put out a respectable Pro model. Zai used to release their strongest model in under two months. It's been three with nothing. All I hear about Qwen 4 Max is that it's a letdown. Kimi K3.1 Pro and DeepSeek Flash both show traces of Astra distillation. The leak showed Moonshot used it, and so did DeepSeek. If this isn't the effect of Anthropic blocking distillation then what is it? Chinese labs need to get serious about using the talented researchers they have and give their models an identity. Right now their models at their best are a cheaper alternative. I want them out of that box. I want to see what makes them different. Anthropic has crossed lines too, no argument there. They destroyed millions of books, human knowledge that was in people's hands, and kept it for themselves. I'll never forgive them for that. But Chinese labs rely on distillation more than they rely on better data. I didn't work with them. Transparency and honesty matter to me, like you've known since I started here.