There are no lossless transformations of natural-language text

AI-assisted writing still needs an author who can explain and endorse every sentence. In Sophie Alpert's writing policy, AI help with drafting and proofreading is acceptable, but the author must check that the final wording and emphasis express the intended ideas.

Simon Willison highlights that responsibility in his discussion of the policy. The policy's title states the underlying concern: every rewrite changes meaning, and information can be lost when the rewriter lacks the author's detailed picture of what they meant. Checking meaning, rather than fluency alone, remains part of authorship.

“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.”

Sophie Alpert

“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.”

Sophie Alpert

“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.””

Sophie Alpert

“It's a short read (supporting its own recommendations) and really good.”

Simon Willison