Palantir Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar stated China's open-source artificial intelligence models are built on "stolen American IP." Sankar made these comments in a Bloomberg interview. He asserted Chinese firms use "distillation attacks." This method trains their systems on advanced U.S. model outputs. It allows them to replicate powerful capabilities at a lower cost.
The practice involves using a powerful AI's responses to teach a smaller, less expensive model. Sankar described this as an economic threat to the United States. He urged American AI labs to more aggressively protect their intellectual property. Other firms, including Anthropic, have made similar accusations against Chinese companies. These accusations highlight growing concerns over intellectual property protection in the competitive AI landscape.