[ByteDance Denies Fear of U.S. as Reason for Rejecting Distillation, Admits Widening Gap in Large Models] According to monitoring by Dongcha Beating, ByteDance CEO Liang Rubo responded during the mid-year all-hands meeting, stating that external speculation attributing the company's insistence on independent R&D to external pressure is 'baseless guessing.' He explained that the real reason is the desire for the team to delay gratification and build a solid technical foundation, which is crucial for achieving AGI in the long term. This directly contradicts the core explanation published by *The Information* the previous day, which claimed ByteDance was concerned that distilling cutting-edge U.S. models could reignite scrutiny from Washington and pose risks to TikTok's operations. ByteDance did not deny rejecting distillation itself but refuted the claim that political risks were the reason behind the decision. ByteDance also acknowledged the short-term costs of this approach. Liang Rubo stated that the company's large language models have fallen further behind leading overseas models. Moving forward, the company will continue to focus on independent R&D and accept a period of lagging behind. In January of this year, Liang Rubo had described the gap as being 'behind the world's top peers.' Six months later, the narrative has shifted to 'the gap has widened.' [Original Link]