AstroAI Lunch Talks - September 15, 2025 - Rocco Di Tella
15 Sep 2025 - Joshua Wing
The video can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xX1AAfr6Udo
Speaker: Rocco di Tella (CfA)
Title: Where’s Waldo? How Human Brains and Neural Networks look for stuff differently
Abstract: Visual Search is the process of deciding “where to look next” in a context where the center of our visual field contains more information than the periphery.
Convolutional feed-forward Neural Networks were inspired in how the visual cortex processes information, and kick-started the deep learning revolution when ImageNet was ‘solved’. In this talk, we’ll explore how CNNs structural similarity to the brain leads to unexpected similarity in higher order emergent behavior.
Transformers instead are structured to maximally leverage modern parallel computing, focusing more on the physicality of GPUs rather than that of Neurons. Consequently, they produce richer semantic concepts, but in an alien manner.
In this talk we’ll talk about the computational modelling of human visual search as performed by the brain, by leveraging both by CNNs and transformers. Then, we’ll talk about how some tools originally from neuroscience (SAEs and probes) can conversely be used to understand AI.