Open models recap: Kimi K3, Qwen 3.8, distillation, and the US-China gap

开源模型季度盘点：Kimi K3、Qwen 3.8、WAIC 演讲、知识蒸馏与开源闭源差距

Nathan Lambert and Florian Brand discuss recent open model releases. Kimi K3 dropped last week; weights are promised for July 27, but API errors are widespread—Lambert's $200 plan has been stable so far. They see big fine-tuning potential in K3, though it requires a full B300 node just to load weights. Qwen announced its next major model will be open-weight, and Xi Jinping's WAIC speech explicitly backed open source as a strategy, signaling acceleration from Chinese labs. The hosts push back on the 'how many months behind closed models' framing—benchmark gaps vary wildly, and on agentic coding tasks a few months' lag matters a lot. Distillation debates also get a critical look; they argue most takes miss the nuance.

Why it matters: Nathan Lambert's podcast recap covers concrete open-model updates: Kimi K3 weights dropping 7/27, Qwen's next flagship going open-weight, and WAIC speech signals. Downside: it's a roundup transcript, not a primary release, and some topics (distillation, open-closed gap) are on...