Profs and Pints Meetup-Metro DC

Profs and Pints Northern Virginia presents: “Can Artificial Intelligence ‘See’?” A look at how humans and artificial intelligence systems interpret the visual world in fundamentally different ways, with Arryn Robbins, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Richmond and cognitive scientist who researches visual attention, perception, and category learning.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/nv-can-AI-see .]

Artificial intelligence can now identify faces, categorize objects, describe scenes, and outperform humans on certain visual tasks. But does AI actually “see” the world the way that people do? Or does it arrive at correct answers using representations that differ markedly from human perception?

Join Arryn Robbins of the University of Richmond for a fascinating exploration of how humans and AI construct meaning from visual information and a look at comparisons between human perception and AI that reveal just how dynamic and context-dependent our own visual systems really are.

Dr. Robbins, who previously has given excellent Profs and Pints talks on flaws and biases in human visual perception, will draw from research in cognitive science, visual perception, and AI vision systems.

She’ll explain how human perception is not merely a simple recording of the world, but an active process shaped by expectations, context, goals, and recent experience. You’ll learn how humans form flexible mental representations that allow us to recognize objects across changing environments and conditions, and why those representations continuously adapt as we interact with the world.

Many AI systems, by contrast, learn visual categories through statistical patterns in data. They can produce impressive results, but sometimes they also produce strange and unexpected failures, and sometimes they classify images in ways that seem strange to us.

Dr. Robbins will discuss what these differences reveal about the nature of perception itself, and why the mismatch between human and AI representations matters for technologies like self-driving cars, medical imaging, facial recognition, and automated surveillance.

Important for anyone trying to understand the rapidly growing role of AI in daily life, this talk will explore one of the biggest questions in cognitive science and artificial intelligence: What does it actually mean to “see” and understand the world? (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: “Eye Farm” by Nevit Dilmen (Wikimedia Commons).

Profs and Pints Northern Virginia presents: “Dune and Messiahs,” on word of saviors in religion and science fiction, with Peter Herman, former lecturer in theology and religious studies at Marymount University and scholar of religious and social themes in sci fi.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/northern-virginia-dune-messiahs .]

Dune: Part Three is scheduled for release in December, and trailers for the epic space opera film have fans of the Dune franchise longing for it like visitors to its desert planet Arrakis long for water. Based on the second volume of renowned science fiction novelist Frank Herbert's Dune saga, the movie depicts the internal and external conflicts of protagonist Paul Atreides, an emperor treated by others as a messiah while being depicted as an antihero.

The film will raise intriguing questions related to the presence of redeeming figures, or messiahs, throughout both science fiction and religious texts. Among them: What exactly do we mean by the term “messiah”? Why have many religious traditions looked for a redeemer to emerge? What happens if the messiah gets it all wrong?

Explore such questions—and prepare yourself to enjoy the upcoming Dune film at a much deeper level—with Dr. Peter Herman, who has given several excellent, thought-provoking Profs and Pints talks on the Dune franchise.

To center Dune in the discussion, we’ll look at the character of Paul Atriedes as a ruler who has launched a jihad across known space to reconquer it. His prescient visions show him that although the spread of religious war is not optimal, neither is it the worst potential future for humanity, and he allows excess and violence to continue in his name out of a conviction that it’s for the greater good. Throughout the book on which the upcoming film is based, Atriedes struggles with his followers' desire to view him as a divine figure.

Dr. Herman, a trained theologian, will set such themes in the broader context of religious studies by discussing messianic figures across various religious traditions. Among them, Christianity names Jesus of Nazareth as the messiah, but he is hardly the first person in the canonical Bible given that title. Mainstream Judaism does not anticipate any similar, deified figure descending from heaven, but messianic strains of Judaism have looked for the arrival of a political liberator. Islam, from which Frank Herbert borrowed terms applied to Paul Atriedes, contains reference to someone serving not as a redeemer but as a heavenly guide. All branches of Buddhism situate within each new age of their cyclical cosmology a Buddha-yet-to-come.

We’ll look at the human tendency in confusing times to seek out direct, uncomplicated answers and to embrace messianism as part of apocalypticism, which foretells a straightforward sorting process in which believers, as good people, see reward while their enemies, as bad people, see punishment.

Dune fans will feel rewarded for coming to this talk. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image by Canva.

Profs and Pints Northern Virginia presents: “Folktales of Summer Forests,” with Brittany Warman, former instructor at Ohio State University and co-founder of the Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/nv-summer-forests .]

Unique folklore emerges from the summer months, when the sun burns hot and nature bursts with full, lush beauty. Some of this lore is strange, some of it tragic, and some as beautiful as sunlight through branches.

Wander deep into the folklore of summer with Brittany Warman of the Carterhaugh School, an extraordinary educational organization which has earned a large and loyal following among Profs and Pints fans with its captivating talks on folktales, fairy tales, legends, and myths.

We’ll look at why the forest stands as the perfect setting for enchantment and mystery. It’s by turns a place of shade and rest and a place of uncertainty and fear. It can be dangerous, bountiful, tame, or wild. It shelters witches, fairies, monsters, and more under its branches.

From the forest come the legends of the illusive Green Man, the king of the woods. Also told are stories of sacred trees, hidden dances, and fairies who engage in midsummer abductions. Fairy tales like “The Witch in the Woods” and “The White Deer” tell of hidden doorways, magic rings, and cursed princesses.

Let Dr. Warman guide you through magical forests and you’ll emerge seeing the wonder in every leaf, stream, and wildflower. ( Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: "Fairies in a Bird's Nest," an 1860 painting by John Anster Fitzgerald.

Profs and Pints DC presents: “Maintain Your Brain,” a research-based guide to nurturing your brain and staying sharp as you age, with Dr. Majid Fotuhi, adjunct professor of neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University’s Mind/Brain Institute and author of The Invincible Brain.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/dc-maintain-your-brain .]

Most people assume memory loss is inevitable with age, but that’s not the case. Dramatic leaps forward in brain research over the past decade have produced a host of both surprising and actionable findings related to brain health and resilience.

If you are concerned about your brain’s long-term health or looking after aging parents, you won’t want to miss this upcoming Profs and Pints talk. The speaker, Dr. Majid Fotuhi, is a neurologist and neuroscientist who has spent four decades studying Alzheimer's disease, memory, and the science of brain resilience. He developed a 12-week clinical program that has helped hundreds of patients improve on objective cognitive tests and experience MRI-confirmed increases in the volume of their hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for memory and learning.

You’ll learn how the brain has a remarkable ability to grow new connections, increase in volume, and recover from years of neglect—a property called neuroplasticity. At the same time, even a single night of poor sleep causes a measurable buildup in the brain of amyloid, the protein linked to Alzheimer's.

Dr. Fotuhi will describe how our understanding of neuroplasticity has greatly increased since ten years ago, when the prevailing view in medicine was that the adult brain is essentially fixed, a finished product that could only decline with age. Thanks to subsequent clinical trial data we now know that what we eat, how we sleep, whether we exercise, how we manage stress, and how much cognitive simulation we experience all directly reshape brain structure and function. Efforts to tend to these areas can improve memory scores and reverse early cognitive decline in people who were already showing Alzheimer’s symptoms.

These are not small effects seen in obscure journals. Many of these findings come from institutions like Harvard, the Mayo Clinic, and the National Institutes of Health, and they are reshaping how neurologists think about prevention and treatment.

Among the questions Dr. Fotuhi will tackle: Is Alzheimer's disease really preventable? Can you reverse early memory loss with lifestyle changes alone? Why does chronic stress quietly damage your brain even when you feel fine? ( Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image by Canva.