China sets conditions for US AI talks, criticizes Anthropic over model distillation dispute

The already fragile state of US-China tech diplomacy just got a lot more complicated. China has set preconditions for upcoming AI negotiations with the United States while simultaneously lobbing accusations at Anthropic, the maker of the Claude AI model, in what is shaping up to be one of the most consequential standoffs in the brief history of artificial intelligence. The dispute centers on allegations that Alibaba’s Qwen AI lab orchestrated a sweeping campaign to extract capabilities from Anthropic’s Claude model. Anthropic claims nearly 25,000 fraudulent accounts generated over 28.8 million unauthorized queries between April 22 and June 5, targeting Claude’s most advanced features in software engineering and autonomous reasoning. The distillation allegations On June 10, Anthropic sent a letter to US senators laying out what it described as the most extensive recorded exploitation of the Claude model. The technique in question, known as model distillation, involves using one AI system’s outputs to train a cheaper, smaller model. The US government responded swiftly. The Commerce Department restricted access to Anthropic’s advanced AI models in mid-June, citing national security co...