Deep neural networks have demonstrated remarkable performance in supervised
learning tasks but require large amounts of labeled data. Self-supervised
learning offers an alternative paradigm, enabling the model to learn from data
without explicit labels. Information theory has been instrumental in
understanding and optimizing deep neural networks. Specifically, the
information bottleneck principle has been applied to optimize the trade-off
between compression and relevant information preservation in supervised
settings. However, the optimal information objective in self-supervised
learning remains unclear. In this paper, we review various approaches to
self-supervised learning from an information-theoretic standpoint and present a
unified framework that formalizes the \textit{self-supervised
information-theoretic learning problem}. We integrate existing research into a
coherent framework, examine recent self-supervised methods, and identify
research opportunities and challenges. Moreover, we discuss empirical
measurement of information-theoretic quantities and their estimators. This
paper offers a comprehensive review of the intersection between information
theory, self-supervised learning, and deep neural networks.

本文综述了信息理论、自监督学习和深度神经网络三者交叉领域的最新研究进展，提出了自监督信息理论学习问题的统一框架，并讨论了信息论量的经验测量和估算方法。