The U.S. says China's AI progress is down to 'distillation.' But is it that clear cut?

Distillation (training an AI model using outputs from a more advanced model) has become a focal point in U.S.-China AI competition, with American officials claiming Chinese labs use this technique to catch up. However, some experts like Cohere CEO Aidan Gomez argue that China's AI progress stems partly from genuine independent innovation, not just copying, citing Chinese models that outperform American ones on certain benchmarks—something distillation alone cannot achieve.