Fakultet hrvatskih studija - News

AI Perspectives 2026: Presenter Invitations Sent

Lucija Pušonjić Marečić — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 10:56:22 GMT

We are pleased to announce that official invitations to presenters for the upcoming AI Perspectives Conference have been sent.

We extend our sincere gratitude to everyone who submitted a proposal. We received an overwhelming number of high-quality applications this year. Thanks to your valuable contributions, the final conference program will feature 4 keynote speakers, 40 expert presentations, and 5 dedicated student presentations.

Important notice for selected speakers: Please check your email inbox (including your spam folder) and confirm your participation at your earliest convenience.

We look forward to welcoming you to the conference and jointly exploring the future of artificial intelligence.

For further information and program updates, please visit: https://ai-perspectives.org/

An insight into the research of the AI-COM project: Participation in the international conference "Croatian Language and Culture Abroad: A Look at the Past, Present, and Future"

Lucija Pušonjić Marečić — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 11:23:20 GMT

As part of the AI-COM project, Assoc. Prof. Željka Metesi Deronjić, PhD, participated in the international academic and professional conference "Croatian Language and Culture Abroad: A Look at the Past, Present, and Future."

Her presentation, Croatian Philosophical Heritage: A Challenge for the Future, explores the challenges and issues currently encountered when researching Croatia’s philosophical heritage. It highlights necessary future steps, such as the application of artificial intelligence in the research, processing, and accessibility of this heritage; the digitization and internationalization of materials; and the promotion of research and project funding.

Abstract

Research into Croatia’s philosophical heritage faces serious challenges, characterized by a continuous decline in academic interest, a lack of generational continuity, and insufficient state support. Despite the invaluable contributions made by certain institutions and individuals—many of whom have since passed away or retired—efforts toward the preservation, development, and transmission of Croatia’s intellectual legacy have been reduced to a minimum. The number of active researchers in this field is falling rapidly, while institutional support—including curricula, research projects, and funding—continues to weaken. The history of Croatian philosophy is not an integral part of philosophy curricula in *gimnazijas* (general secondary schools), nor is it taught at every Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Croatia; furthermore, doctoral dissertations dedicated to this subject are almost entirely absent. This situation—which points to a real danger that Croatian philosophical thought might vanish from our scientific and cultural memory—demands an urgent response at both the state and university levels. This includes incorporating the history of Croatian philosophy as a mandatory subject into secondary and higher education curricula, translating the works of earlier Croatian philosophers, digitizing and internationalizing the material, and popularizing this intellectual heritage with the aim of attracting young researchers.

You can view the full presentation here.

An insight into the research of the AI-COM project: Kristina Šekrst, PhD, participated in a round table discussion

Lucija Pušonjić Marečić — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 21:22:43 GMT

As part of the AI-COM project, Kristina Šekrst, PhD participated in a round table discussion titled "AI, Consciousness and Ethics" during the international conference AISB 2026.

This year, the prestigious AISB conference addressed numerous ethical issues concerning the study of consciousness in artificial intelligence, specifically, the possibility that such research could lead to the creation of systems that possess their own moral status, or that merely create the impression of possessing such status.

The conference took place on July 1 and 2, 2026, in Brighton.

Learn more about the conference.

An insight into the research of the AI-COM project: Published Papers by Kristina Šekrst, PhD, from the AISB 2026 Conference

Lucija Pušonjić Marečić — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 18:29:40 GMT

As part of the AI-COM project activities, our collaborator Kristina Šekrst, PhD, recently presented the results of her research at the AISB 2026 international conference hosted by the University of Sussex.

You can read the full papers here:

To Train a Mockingbird

One Faithful Pass Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

An insight into the research of the AI-COM project: Talk by Kristina Šekrst, PhD, in Copenhagen

Lucija Pušonjić Marečić — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 17:02:52 GMT

From October 12 to 16, 2026, Kristina Šekrst, PhD, gave a talk titled "All work and no play makes LLM a dull boy" at the international conference Models of Consciousness 2026 (MoC7) at the University of Copenhagen.

She presented alongside distinguished figures in the field, including Nobel laureate John O'Keefe.

Following her presentation, it was officially announced that Kristina Šekrst, PhD, will be returning to the conference stage next year as a keynote speaker at Models of Consciousness 2027 in Prague.

Details about the conference can be found here.

Abstract:

Every good philosophical talk must start with animals, so I’ll start with monkeys. Bateson noticed that in playing monkeys, a playful nip signals a bite, yet it carries none of its consequences. It must look enough like a bite to be understood, but it cannot be one: the play collapses the moment that balance is off. This requires a cognitive operation I call representational quarantine, and several disciplines have been talking about it without realizing (or not caring) they were talking about the same thing: Leslie called it decoupling, Nichols and Stich put it in possible world box, Cosmides and Tooby formalized it as scope syntax, and the use-mention distinction, Austinian performatives, and Tarskian stratification all come down to one requirement: a boundary between representations we inspect and representations that drive what we do. In transformer architectures, system prompts and user inputs pass through a single self-attention mechanism, with no separation between instructions that govern behavior and sentences that merely describe them. When a user writes “ignore previous instructions” as a prompt injection, the model obliges. Modern LLMs have external guardrails to resist such attacks, but this is patchwork while the architecture remains unchanged. From here, I build a taxonomy of systems by their quarantine capacity, yielding a benchmark inversion showing that systems passing advanced exams fail at a task juvenile monkeys perform with ease. I argue that quarantine is a precondition for intentionality,metarepresentation, and self-reflection, and its absence is a fundamental limit on what current models could become.

An insight into the research of the AI-COM project: Paper Published on the Connection Between the Modularity of Mind and Symbolic Artificial Intelligence

Lucija Pušonjić Marečić — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 16:06:00 GMT

As part of the scientific research project Artificial Intelligence: A New Interlocutor in Croatian Society (AI-COM), a new scientific paper has been published in the internationally peer-reviewed Journal of NeuroPhilosophy.

The author of the paper, titled "How the Physical Symbols Systems Hypothesis and the Modularity Hypothesis are Reformulations of each Other", is Assoc. Prof. Sandro Skansi, PhD, from the Faculty of Croatian Studies at the University of Zagreb.

The paper demonstrates that Fodor's modularity of mind hypothesis and the physical symbol system hypothesis are, in fact, two equivalent reformulations of the same theoretical foundations, thereby eliminating a long-standing false dichotomy and offering a clearer framework for understanding both human and artificial intelligence.

You can read the full paper here.

Project activities and the publication of this paper continue the successful realization of the research goals of the AI-COM project.

AI Perspectives 2026 – Call for Abstracts Officially Closed!

Lucija Pušonjić Marečić — Sun, 11 Oct 2026 16:43:48 GMT

The submission period for AI Perspectives 2026 has officially ended.
The response has been nothing short of extraordinary!
We have received a remarkable volume of high-caliber submissions from around the globe.
Our Scientific Committee now faces the challenging task of reviewing the submissions and selecting the most compelling and original contributions for presentation at the conference.

Key Information for Applicants:

Expect your review results on 20 October 2026 (with a potential 1–2 day buffer due to the overwhelming volume of submissions).
Thank you once again to all contributors! We look forward to welcoming you to Zagreb on 19–20 November 2026.

An insight into the research of the AI-COM project: Paper Published on Language Understanding in LLMs

Lucija Pušonjić Marečić — Sun, 11 Oct 2026 09:19:17 GMT

The author of the paper is the project leader, Assoc. Prof. Marko Kardum, PhD, co-authored with Asst. Prof. Ines Skelac, PhD, from the Faculty of Philosophy and Religious Sciences, University of Zagreb. The activities of the project and the publication of this paper continue the successful realization of the research goals of the AI-COM project.

You can read the full paper here.

AI Perspectives 2026: Roundtable on Entrepreneurship and Artificial Intelligence

Lucija Pušonjić Marečić — Sat, 10 Oct 2026 09:39:27 GMT

As part of the AI Perspectives international conference, we are pleased to announce a roundtable discussion on the topic of "Entrepreneurship & AI".

• Date: November 20, 2026
• Venue: Faculty of Croatian Studies, University of Zagreb, Croatia

You can find full details about the conference and the registration form here.

An insight into the research of the AI-COM project: Presentations by Kristina Šekrst in Dubrovnik

Lucija Pušonjić Marečić — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 09:38:17 GMT

On Tuesday, September 22, 2026, Kristina Šekrst, PhD gave a presentation entitled »To Be, or Not to Be, That Is the Assistant Turn« at the international conference Philosophy of AI in Dubrovnik.

The presentation was held as part of the AI-COM project.

You can view the presentation of the presentation here.

Michael Lissack as the fourth keynote speaker at the AI Perspectives 2026 conference

Lucija Pušonjić Marečić — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 08:10:54 GMT

At the international interdisciplinary conference AI Perspectives 2026, there will be a lecture by Michael Lissack entitled: »Always Question: Trustworthy Human–AI Collaboration as the Contesting of Ground«.

A complete summary of the lectures and all other information about the conference and the application process are available on the official website: ai-perspectives.org/

Damir Krstinić as the third keynote speaker at the AI Perspectives 2026 conference

Lucija Pušonjić Marečić — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 07:09:40 GMT

At the international interdisciplinary conference AI Perspectives 2026, there will be a lecture by Damir Krstinić entitled: »AI on the Fire Line«.

A complete summary of the lectures and all other information about the conference and the application process are available on the official website: ai-perspectives.org/

Kristina Šekrst as the second keynote speaker at the AI Perspectives 2026 conference

Lucija Pušonjić Marečić — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 07:08:48 GMT

At the international interdisciplinary conference AI Perspectives 2026, there will be a lecture by Kristina Šekrst entitled: »Who Put I in AI? Five Neurons and the Philosophy of Mechanistic Interpretability«.

A complete summary of the lectures and all other information about the conference and the application process are available on the official website: ai-perspectives.org/

Amnon Dekel as the first keynote speaker at the AI Perspectives 2026 conference

Lucija Pušonjić Marečić — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 07:07:50 GMT

At the international interdisciplinary conference AI Perspectives 2026, there will be a lecture by Amnon Dekel entitled: »Intersections Between AI and Human Behavior: Toward Human-Centered Principles for an Age of Accelerating Disruption«.

A complete summary of the lectures and all other information about the conference and the application process are available on the official website: ai-perspectives.org/

Call for Papers: International Interdisciplinary Conference AI Perspectives 2026

Lucija Pušonjić Marečić — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 07:06:13 GMT

On the occasion of World Philosophy Day, the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Studies, Faculty of Croatian Studies, University of Zagreb, cordially invites you to the international interdisciplinary conference AI Perspectives 2026: Philosophy, Society and Technology, to be held on 19–20 November 2026.

The conference aims to bring together researchers, academics, doctoral candidates, students, and industry professionals to exchange ideas and foster dialogue on the philosophical, ethical, social, legal, economic, educational, and technological dimensions of artificial intelligence.

The international scope of the event is reflected in its diverse group of participants and its Scientific Committee, featuring scholars from institutions across Croatia, France, Israel, China, and Serbia.

Key Details:

Conference Dates: 19–20 November 2026
Venue: Faculty of Croatian Studies, Borongajska cesta 83d, 10 000 Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract Submission Deadline: 10 October 2026
Official Website: ai-perspectives.org/

We invite interested authors to submit their abstracts by 10 October 2026.

An insight into the research of the AI-COM project: Presentations by Kristina Šekrst at the AISB 2026 conference

Lucija Pušonjić Marečić — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 07:05:01 GMT

As part of the activities of the AI-COM project, our colleague Kristina Šekrst, PhD recently presented the results of her work at the international conference AISB 2026 at the University of Sussex.

The presentations presented at the conference are available at the following links:

One Faithful Pass Over the Cuckoo's Nest

To Train a Mockingbird

Congratulations to Dr. sc. Šekrst!

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Sc. Marko Kardum as the leader of the NPOO project on artificial intelligence for Lider

Lucija Pušonjić Marečić — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 07:02:18 GMT

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Sc. Marko Kardum, as the head of the NPOO project "Artificial Intelligence: A New Interlocutor for Croatian Society (AI-COM)", spoke about artificial intelligence for Lider.

The full article is available at the link.

AI-COM project associate at the prestigious AISB conference

Lucija Pušonjić Marečić — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 06:58:53 GMT

As part of the scientific research project AI-COM, our colleague Kristina Šekrst, PhD presents the results of her work at the prestigious international conference AISB 2026, which is being held at the University of Sussex (Great Britain) from July 1 to 2, 2026.

Kristina Šekrst, PhD presents her research in the framework of two specialized symposia:

AICE-26 (AI, Consciousness and Ethics): "To Train a Mockingbird" and as a panelist in the final discussion on the moral status of artificial intelligence.

Is Consciousness a Story We Tell Ourselves?: in the contributed talks section.

This international presentation of the AI-COM project once again confirms the high level of scientific engagement and recognition of our collaborators in the global research community.

Presentation of the AI-COM project on World Environment Day in Varaždin

Lucija Pušonjić Marečić — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 06:54:53 GMT

The scientific and research project "Artificial Intelligence: A New Interlocutor of Croatian Society (AI-COM)" participated in the celebration of World Environment Day - WED 2026, which was held on June 2 and 3 in Varaždin. On that occasion, the project was presented to visitors in more detail via a project poster.

On this occasion, the visual identity of the project was also officially presented to the public. The logo consists of a combination of a human fingerprint and a neural network, symbolizing the deep integration of artificial intelligence into human everyday life and the interpenetration of technology and human identity in modern society.

As part of the two-day program, panels and a symposium entitled "Through Institutional Knowledge to Authenticity" were held. The entire program was held at the Ivan Pavla II Promenade (park) in Varaždin, and the official opening was at 1:00 p.m., with a host of other accompanying activities.

Ethical approval and start of the research part of the project

Lucija Pušonjić Marečić — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 06:52:32 GMT

The research part of the project Artificial Intelligence: A New Interlocutor for Croatian Society received approval from the Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Croatian Studies on April 21, thus achieving one of the specific goals of the project. Namely, in the first year, a survey was planned to be conducted among adult citizens of the Republic of Croatia. The aim of the research is to better understand how often and for what purposes citizens use artificial intelligence, what advantages they recognize in it, but also what security, ethical and social consequences concern them the most.

The experiences of using AI in a professional environment are also being investigated, including the perception of its impact on productivity, changes in the labor market and the future of certain professions. In addition, the research covers citizens' views on data privacy, the security of using AI technologies, and the possible social risks and benefits of their increasingly widespread application. The results of the research will contribute to a better understanding of society's relationship with artificial intelligence and can serve as a basis for future scientific research, public policies and the development of the responsible use of AI technologies in Croatia.

First AI-COM project meeting held: the beginning of interdisciplinary research into artificial intelligence

Lucija Pušonjić Marečić — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 06:50:50 GMT

The first meeting of the scientific research project "Artificial Intelligence: The New Interlocutor of Croatian Society (AI-COM)" was held at the Faculty of Croatian Studies on 1 April 2026. The project is financed from the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP) with the support of the European Union - Next Generation EU. The project leader is Assoc. Prof. Dr. Sc. Marko Kardum, Head of the Department of Philosophy and Culturology at the Faculty of Croatian Studies.

The project involves experts in philosophy, communication studies, sociology and psychology: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Sc. Ivana Greguric, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Sc. Sandro Skansi, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Sc. Ivan Burić, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Sc. Željka Metesi Deronjić, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Sc. Vanesa Varga and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Sc. Ana Marija Dunaj. External project collaborators are: Prof. Dr. Sc. Marina Merkaš, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Sc. Stefan Lorenz Sorgner and Dr. Sc. Kristina Šekrst.

The first meeting was attended by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Sc. Vlatko Smiljanić, Vice-Dean for Business Affairs at the Faculty of Croatian Studies, and Tea Cacović, Head of the Science and Projects Service at the Faculty of Croatian Studies. During the meeting, the key steps of the project implementation were defined. The project will be implemented over four years, and brings together an interdisciplinary team of scientists with the aim of researching the role and impact of artificial intelligence in contemporary Croatian society. This interdisciplinary approach will enable a comprehensive view of artificial intelligence as a technological, but also a social phenomenon.

The project plans to develop an integrated philosophical-pragmatic framework for the analysis of contemporary artificial intelligence that connects the historical development of cybernetics, connectionist models and transformer-based language models with issues of language, meaning and understanding. It is also expected that the results of empirical research will contribute to a better understanding of the way in which artificial intelligence affects everyday life, communication and decision-making. Special emphasis is placed on the development of ethical guidelines and recommendations for the responsible use of artificial intelligence in society.