Calibrating Semantic Uncertainty from Observable Language-Model Probabilities

Abstract

As generative artificial intelligence enters scientific and professional work, its uncertainty must be defined on the states that matter for inference and decision-making. Language models assign probabilities to words, whereas applications require uncertainty over meaningful states such as diagnoses, hypotheses or operational conditions. We introduce a \emph{semantic map}: a prespecified, testable bridge from probabilities over verbal responses to a posterior over declared finite states. The language distribution remains unrestricted; held-out calibration connects it to a reference posterior. We derive posterior-error bounds and conditions for existence, conditional uniqueness, presentation stability and stable inverse recovery. This distinction matters because language probabilities depend on prompt wording, while the target posterior should not change under information-equivalent rewording. Experiments use professional market text compiled from Federal Reserve economic and financial series, together with controlled simulations having exact posteriors. Across two fitted language models, language-derived probabilities outperform printed numerical confidence, recover held-out posteriors with valid uncertainty coverage, remain largely stable under paraphrase and respond appropriately to altered evidence. \textbf{Prompt engineering optimises a wording-dependent response; robust scientific use requires validated stability of application-relevant meaning.} The proposed map turns semantic uncertainty in generative systems into an identifiable and testable statistical measurement problem and, when its acceptance conditions hold, yields an auditable posterior estimate.