---
title: "There Are No Lossless Transformations of Natural-Language Text: Lessons from an Engineer's AI Writing Policy"
source: "Simon Willison 博客（Atom）"
source_tier: "t2"
url: "https://simonwillison.net/2026/Aug/11/there-are-no-lossless-transformations-of-natural-language-text/#atom-everything"
permalink: "https://feed.astralor.com/items/itm_dbdfce63780157b4161263a9"
published: "2026-08-11T23:48:35.000Z"
score: 67
channel: "ai"
tags: ["AI Writing","LLM","Simon Willison","Technical Documentation"]
---

# There Are No Lossless Transformations of Natural-Language Text: Lessons from an Engineer's AI Writing Policy

## AI commentary

> What makes this worth reading is it turns a vague intuition into a clear policy: the risk of AI rewriting lies not in style but in meaning loss. Especially valuable for team leads managing content quality—don't let AI become a disclaimer inside your docs.

## At a glance

Sophie Alpert shares an internal policy on engineers' acceptable use of AI writing. The core idea: there are no lossless transformations of natural-language text—every rewrite and rephrase shifts meaning. When using LLMs to polish docs, engineers must stand behind every sentence and ensure the document truly represents their own thoughts, rather than blaming AI for unclear lines. Short but highly practical.

## Key points

- Any AI rewrite causes information loss, as the model lacks your full personal intent.
- Engineers must own every idea and sentence; 'AI wrote it' is not an acceptable excuse.
- AI writing tools can assist expression, but the final text must reflect the author's genuine thoughts.

## Full text

There are no lossless transformations of natural-language text Sophie Alpert shares her "internal policy on acceptable use of AI writing by engineers". It's a short read (supporting its own recommendations) and really good. If you chose to have LLMs help massage your writing the following rule seems crucial to me: You must stand behind every idea and every sentence in your docs. It is your responsibility to make sure that the entire document is representative of your own thoughts before you share it. If a reviewer asks, “What did you mean by this line?”, it’s not acceptable to reply with “Oh sorry, AI wrote that, just ignore it.” You will confuse your readers (and waste their time) if you present them things that are not genuinely representative of your thoughts. The "no lossless transformations" idea from the post title is expanded on here: There are no lossless transformations of natural-language text — every rewrite and rephrase changes the meaning of your writing, and if this is done by an entity that doesn’t have the most detailed mental representation of what you personally were trying to communicate, information will be lost. Tags: writing, ai, generative-ai, llms, ai-misuse

---

Verify against the original before citing; curated by Astral Feed: https://feed.astralor.com/items/itm_dbdfce63780157b4161263a9