How Did Anthropic Stop Distillation Without Washington?

Anthropic pressed Washington to crack down on open models on the basis of supposed IP theft. One panelist says Anthropic could have stopped distillation itself. A government crackdown would have left distillation running and made the market less competitive, because only the companies can mount the technical defenses.

Back in July, 50 major companies, including NVIDIA, Dell, Microsoft, and A16Z, signed an open letter telling the government not to overly restrict open weight models. 200 startups signed another letter amid the same push in Washington. Once distillation happens, the horse is out of the barn, and the government cannot put it back. Companies should know their customers and stop them, the point Chamath Palihapitiya made. Several months ago Anthropic came crying to the government to take out competitors. The administration rejected regulating open source that way. Anthropic then had to build the technical capabilities to detect distillation, and Anthropic stopped it.

Anthropic proved the point from three or four months ago. Anthropic was in the best position to stop distillation, could stop it, and should not push the job onto the government.