Zhang Yiming’s internal voice: Byte Model rejects “AI distillation” and insists on long-termism. According to reports, Zhang Yiming, founder of ByteDance, clearly emphasized at a recent internal meeting that large model development must adhere to long-termism and delayed gratification, and avoid using other people’s model output in exchange for temporary list rankings.

Zhang Yiming’s internal voice: Byte Model rejects “AI distillation” and insists on long-termism. According to reports, Zhang Yiming, the founder of ByteDance, clearly emphasized at a recent internal meeting that large model development must adhere to long-termism and delayed gratification, and it is forbidden to use the output of other people’s models in exchange for temporary list rankings. Zhang Yiming said that even if it temporarily lags behind its competitors in the field of artificial intelligence, the Byte Seed team will never rely on AI distillation technology to improve its own model. The so-called "distillation" means using the output data of more advanced cutting-edge models to train its own AI models. Previously, AI giant Anthropic had accused many companies of distilling their models, but ByteDance's Seed series models were not included in the list of those involved. It is reported that ByteDance has internally implemented a red line policy that strictly prohibits distillation of open source models, and has comprehensively strengthened compliance restrictions internally through API detection and other technical means. Zhang Yiming pointed out that although relying on distillation can bring short-term effects, it will seriously interfere with true long-term technological breakthroughs. As global large-scale model research and development enters the deep water zone, technological source innovation and the compliance of synthetic data are becoming the core focus of the industry. ByteDance's resolute cut off of distillation technology not only reflects its strategic focus on independent research and development and underlying technology construction, but also indicates that large model competition is changing from the pursuit of short-term performance indicators to long-term value competition that tempers independent innovation capabilities. via AI News (author: AI Base)