Researchers affiliated with the People’s Liberation Army of China (PLA) are using responses from American GPT and Claude models to train their own military AI systems. This was reported by Reuters, citing an analysis of more than 80 Chinese academic papers and patents conducted jointly with the Jamestown Foundation research center.
The technique is called “model distillation”: a smaller model learns by mimicking the responses of a more powerful one. This is a common and legal practice in the AI industry. However, in China it is being used to circumvent restrictions imposed by developers and to create military systems. Chinese researchers are most interested in AI reasoning — the most expensive and hardest-to-replicate part of the technology.
Researchers found that PLA Unit 96941 (military intelligence and cyber warfare) used GPT-3.5 to summarize program code and trained its own model on those summaries. The PLA’s National University of Defense Technology compressed an image-processing model for UAVs that analyzes video and assists with navigation and target designation even without a communications link. The Academy of Military Sciences of China launched a target recognition model on simulation equipment involving drones, ships, and underwater vehicles.
In response to the published research, the developers of Claude stated that they do not provide their models to users in China and do not permit their use for military purposes.
At the same time, copying a language model does not give a local system full functionality. According to Trevor Coverк, co-founder of AI company Sapien, copied models remain weaker than the original: the Chinese transfer specific capabilities into a cheaper local system, but do not create technologically independent systems.
Separately, media outlets previously reported, citing European intelligence documents, that since 2023 China and Russia have agreed on an exchange. Under the terms, Beijing offers Moscow developments in the field of loitering munitions, air and missile defense, and AI, while Russia tests them in combat conditions in Ukraine and shares the results. As a result, China receives data on combat experience, military technologies, and their effectiveness, and can strengthen its own developments. It is also known that Moscow shares artificial intelligence technologies and mass-production resources with China for the joint development of a new generation of autonomous “swarm” munitions.
