AGORA which literally means “gathering place” in Greek, seeks to relive the ancient assembly of philosophers, students, leaders, and the public in order to share and discuss ideas and current events. The forum aims to be a friendly and informal session with varying format such as panel discussion, short lecture as well as debates in order to generate and promote idea generation within the campus.



            The first AGORA session titled: “The Nature of Mind and Artificial Intelligence” kicked off on the 31st of March 2015. Nine students together with our guest, Dr. Nicolas Greliche, JCUS Statistician, were eager to discuss the presented topic. The discussion began with a short introduction on the purpose of the AGORA session by GKS President, Ahmad, and jumped straight into the topic at hand.

            Several books and literatures were cited such as the Language of Thought by Susan Schneider and Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter. One of the turning point of the argument was a question: What if human were also programmed with just one program, for example: [to find solace], and we are alive in order to fulfil the program. What then stop us from programming a machine with similar program?

            As the session came to an end, all the participants agreed that since we still cannot define the parameters of what makes us human, we simply can’t programme intelligence in the way we discussed. That however, would not stop us from discovering more about human nature as we push the boundaries in AI programming.


            The feedback from the session was very good. All the participants felt that an open discussion about a common topic allow them to freely associate and share ideas with others without boundary. As the purpose of the AGORA is to create a friendly and informal sharing arena, we felt that our first AGORA session was a success and we look forward to the next session in April.