AI RACE:
Chinese military researchers distill US models to create smaller and more secure versions, but an expert said these models have limited capabilities
Chinese military researchers have used outputs from leading US artificial intelligence (AI) models developed by OpenAI and Anthropic to train domestic AI systems to advance China’s defense capabilities, according to a Reuters review of more than 80 Chinese academic papers and patents.The previously unreported findings offer a rare glimpse into how military and security-linked institutions in China are leveraging cutting-edge US AI models as a shortcut to developing specialized systems of their own, despite Washington’s efforts to restrict Beijing’s access to advanced chips and other strategic technologies.The documents show widespread use of a technique known as “model distillation,” in which outputs from a powerful AI system are used to train smaller, specialized models that can be deployed locally without the enormous computing requirements needed to build frontier AI systems from scratch. Reuters’ review, which included research compiled by the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation and shared exclusively with the news agency, showed distillation is widely used by researchers linked to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and other military institutions.
