Garry Tan wants US AI labs to distill frontier models — SkimNews
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- Garry Tan told CNBC he would "do nothing" about Chinese AI labs distilling US frontier models and floated creating an "American distillation regime"
- Tan told TechCrunch he wants smaller US open-weight labs to distill from American frontier labs to build robust non-Chinese open-weight alternatives
- Anthropic released its second report alleging Chinese labs engaged in "illicit distillation attacks" using stolen credentials and hidden identities
- Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei had previously publicly called on US regulators to crack down on distillation
- Tan argued it is overreach for AI labs to dictate what customers do with model outputs, noting frontier labs themselves ingested copyrighted material without permission to train their models
- Tan described the "nightmare scenario" as all advanced AI power concentrating in a single monolithic proprietary provider
Why it matters: Tan's stance directly contradicts Anthropic's public lobbying position and signals a split within the US AI establishment over distillation policy. The founder of Silicon Valley's most influential startup accelerator is effectively telling Washington that open-weight competition — not restrictions — is the right counter to frontier-model concentration.
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