AITECH Workshop “Brain in the Jar” with Students from the Electrical Engineering School Split

On Friday, 29 May 2026, we welcomed first-year students from the Electrical Engineering School Split, who visited us together with their teachers and our former students, Roko Brljević and Tomislav Damjanović.

During the “Brain in the Jar” workshop, we discussed the concept of intelligence and explored how students perceive both human and artificial intelligence. Through activities inspired by the well-known “Chinese Room” thought experiment, we reflected on the possibilities and limitations of artificial intelligence, especially the question of whether the ability to provide correct answers necessarily implies genuine understanding.

The workshop was adapted to secondary school students and encouraged them to think critically about the increasingly important role of artificial intelligence in everyday life, education, and future technical professions.

We were especially pleased by the visit of our first-year undergraduate Informatics student, Luka Biliškov, who gave an inspiring motivational talk to the students. Luka shared his experience of studying Informatics and explained why he chose this study programme at our Faculty.

The workshop was led by Dino Nejašmić, with the support of Monika Mladenović, Petra Crmarić, and Ivana Marin.

The visit took place in a pleasant and stimulating atmosphere, marked by great interest and active participation from the students. We look forward to future meetings and continued cooperation with the Electrical Engineering School Split in promoting informatics, computational thinking, and artificial intelligence among young people.

The workshop was held as part of the project “Artificial Intelligence for Future Technical Education and Industrial Competitiveness” (AITECH), IP-UNIST-48, funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan 2021–2026. The project focuses on the development and application of advanced AI models for adaptive education, technical learning, and industrial competitiveness.