Why Knowledge Distillation Works in Generative Models: A Minimal Working Explanation
Sungmin Cha, Kyunghyun Cho
Knowledge distillation (KD) is a core component in the training and deployment of modern generative models, particularly large language models (LLMs). While its empirical benefits are well documented—enabling smaller student models to emulate the performance of much larger teachers—the underlying mechanisms by which KD improves generative quality remain poorly understood.In this work, we present a minimal working explanation of KD in generative modeling. Using a controlled simulation with mixtures of Gaussians, we demonstrate that distillation induces a trade-off between precision and recall in the student model. As the teacher distribution becomes more selective, the student concentrates more probability mass on high-likelihood regions at the expense of coverage—a behavior modulated by a single entropy-controlling parameter.We then validate this effect in a large-scale language modeling setup using the SmolLM2 family of models. Empirical results reveal the same precision–recall dynamics observed in simulation, where precision corresponds to sample quality and recall to distributional coverage.This precision–recall trade-off proves especially beneficial in scenarios where sample quality outweighs diversity, such as instruction tuning or downstream generation. Our analysis provides a simple and general explanation for the effectiveness of KD in generative modeling.