Abstract

Abstract—This paper studies methods of quantitatively measuring semantic information in communication. We review existing work on quantifying semantic information, then investigate a model-theoretical approach for semantic data compression and reliable semantic communication. We relate our approach to the statistical measurement of information by Shannon, and show that Shannon’s source and channel coding theorems have semantic counterparts. I. BACKGROUND It has long been recognized that the broad subject of communication goes beyond what Shannon’s theory [18] and many of its extensions cover. Weaver [21], just one year after Shannon introduced his information theory, proposed that communication involves problems at three levels as follows: “LEVEL A. How accurately can the symbols of

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