JPEG Compression, but for Thought: AI as Clear-Text Encryption

Originally published at https://www.vaines.org/posts/2026-01-26-jpeg-compression-for-thought/ There seems to be a current trend happening corporate and professional communications - looking at you LinkedIn - where people write bullet points and have AI tools expand on it. Meanwhile, readers are using AI to summarise those same blocks of prose back into a few salient bullet points. Which rather defeats the point of expanding them in the first place. What we have here is person A talking to person B via the worst version of the Telephone Game, just one that involves burning a couple of trees before your turn. This kinda sounds like a lossy compression but for thought. It raises the obvious question: 'If you couldn't be bothered writing it, why would you expect someone to bother reading it'. Especially when the expansion is done without review or consideration. For those who are not huge nerds and are unfamiliar with how JPEG compression works; it's an intentionally lossy process designed