The hidden safeguard was not against distilling, it was against "frontier" ML research with no indication whatsoever of what "frontier" might mean, but possibly even including research into model safety or alignment. That amounts to deliberately boobytrapping research across an entire legit academic field, which is ridiculously unaligned behavior.

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solenoid0937 2 hours ago | parent [-]

This is the same as saying "well some unaligned countries will use refined nuclear material for energy, too!" lmao.

The vast majority of frontier research is about how to build better models, not about alignment.

	▲	zozbot234 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		And as a matter of fact, there's a lot of meaningful research into how to have different sorts of nuclear material that might be usable for power production but not hidden malicious development. That's the closest analog to "safety" and "alignment" in your scenario.