Yes, but sometimes (quite often actually) you really don't care. The entire subfield of audiovisual compression is built around the principle that you don't care. The data is actively being lost and the image distorted, and you're fine with it. Wanting deterministic results out of MP3 is like wanting AC units to be loud. Sure, they are loud, just like MP3 is deterministic, but why exactly is being loud one of your requirements when choosing an AC unit? Isn't it enough to produce cool air, or in case of MP3 - sound good enough?
replyIt would be like telling the computer to compress a music file containing Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, and getting back a file that contains Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up. Maybe you don't care, but I do.
replyYou are talking about AI outright failing to get anything remotely close to the correct result. That's a completely different argument and has nothing to do with non-determinism. Things can be deterministically wrong too.
replyAccuracy, precision and determinism are completely different things. Lossless compression reduces precision, and by that also accuracy, but it doesn't become undeterministic.
replyYou've got terms confused. LossLESS compression does NOT reduce precision or accuracy. Unlike lossY compression, which does.
replyThat said, my point is that determinism is incidental to how current generation of compression algorithms work, not an explicitly desired quality. And even that isn't strictly true, because e.g. x264 in certain multithreaded configurations already produces non-deterministic results that look as good as single-threaded encoding. For this use case - and thousands of others - losing determinism when switching to AI-based solutions really isn't a big deal.