Artificial Intelligence companies embrace "distillation" technology to build cheaper models

According to the Financial Times, leading artificial intelligence companies such as OpenAI, Microsoft (MSFT.O), and Meta Platforms (META.O) are turning to a process known as "distillation" in global competition to build cheaper AI models for consumers and businesses.

Although the "distillation" technology has been widely used for many years, recent advancements have led industry experts to believe that this technology will increasingly become a boon for startups seeking to build applications based on this technology in an economically efficient way.

"Distillation is very magical," said Olivier Goldman, product director of the OpenAI platform. "This process essentially involves taking a very large cutting-edge intelligent model and using it to teach a smaller model... It's very capable in specific tasks, and it's also very cheap with fast execution speed."