Let China copy American AI
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October 31st 2026 The Americans changing politics for the better
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Leaders | Technological competition
Let China copy American AI
Distillation annoys Anthropic and OpenAI. That is not reason enough to ban it
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Illustration: Ben Hickey
Oct 29th 2026|3 min read
A nthropic and Open AI have lately taken up an old tradition in corporate America: bemoaning the Chinese copycat. For decades firms moved assembly lines to China only to find me-too merchants rising next door. Now America’s leading artificial-intelligence labs say the same thing is happening to their models, and want the federal government to stop it.
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