Latest news with #CarloCollodi
Arab News
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Arab News
‘Pinocchio' springs to life on Ithra stage in Dhahran
The most famous little wooden boy in the world sprang to life at the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture, or Ithra, on Thursday night. The story of Pinocchio, reimagined by the acclaimed La Baldufa theater company from Spain, breathed fresh energy from Saudi Arabia into the tale of the adventurous wooden toy who dreams of becoming a real boy. While the tale is widely known thanks to the Oscar-winning 1940 Disney film, 'Pinocchio' was originally a book by Italian author Carlo Collodi, first published in 1883. The story explores themes of poverty, education, fatherhood, and the search for truth. A day before the premiere at Ithra, the three creators and performers behind La Baldufa — Enric Blasi, Carlos Pijuan and Emiliano Pardo —hosted a masterclass on the stage, offering attendees a look into their creative process. The cast discussed their use of what they described as clowning and gestural theater to create works built around social awareness. Founded in Lleida, Spain, in 1996, La Baldufa has spent nearly three decades creating and crafting innovative performing arts productions for live audiences. Materials used on stage are intentionally simple: wood, paper and humans — aligning with their artistic vision. They said they customize each performance. In China, they would have text read aloud by a Chinese audience member on stage and use some of that language. And, as promised, they used Arabic in their Ithra production the following day. Audience participation plays a central role as a random member of the public is invited to read a passage on stage, adding to the sense of spontaneity and inclusivity. Part of the stage was constructed on-site. It is designed for easy transport assembly, using shadow spotlights, paper elements, and audio from the country where they perform, to ensure the production resonates with local audiences. The company has toured more than 40 countries, captivating children of all ages. Each performance is tied to its location. The show incorporates live voices from the audience. Dimmed lights, shifting silhouettes, and dynamic staging help shape the mood. Though music is typically performed live and acoustically, travel constraints required the use of pre-recorded audio featuring both upbeat and slower tempos. Sprinklings of Arabic delighted the crowd, especially when audience members were invited to participate. Two shy girls, initially hesitant, eventually found their voices once on stage — an emotional moment for those watching. Your experience may vary, but the message is clear: this is a show you could try to replicate at home — simple, but not simplistic. Eight-year-old Anwyn Frith told Arab News: 'I was excited about watching 'Pinocchio' tonight; my favorite part was when the man was building Pinocchio,' she said. But she offered a few suggestions: 'They were speaking everything in Arabic and I couldn't understand it. 'Maybe next time they can speak English a little bit more. And maybe add more of the 'Pinocchio' movie into it, like when he keeps lying and his nose grows and goes out.' La Baldufa's interpretation honors the spirit of Collodi's original while inviting contemporary audiences, especially younger ones, into a world of wonder and imagination. After the show, the trio was happy to meet and greet an audience equally eager to connect. Running nightly until May 4, tickets start at SR40 ($10) and are available on the Ithra website.
Forbes
21-03-2025
- Forbes
What AI Can't Do: The Human Skills That Will Define The Future
While AI computes and recombines, humans innovate through curiosity and collaboration. Note: This is the first piece in a series aimed at helping leaders identify and build the human skills we need to successfully navigate the AI era. In The Adventures of Pinocchio, Carlo Collodi's wooden puppet longs to be real. He walks, talks, and mimics a human boy. But without empathy, responsibility, agency, and free will he is doomed to remain a wooden facsimile. AI is no different. It can imitate conversation, logic and even behavior, but it lacks the intelligence that comes from experience, the insight that comes from struggle, and the wisdom that comes from being human. Ethicist Shannon Valor likens AI to a mirror, reflecting our intelligence while having none of its own. And yet, GenAI's speed, power and uncanny human likeness are unsettling. Workers talk to it like a friend while fearing the jobs it will replace. AI's promise is compelling—to free us from the repetitive, mindless tasks that keep us from our most creative work. But it also risks invoking our laziest selves, outsourcing not just our tasks, but our thinking. Effective human-AI collaboration isn't just about training people to use AI. It's about making sure AI doesn't train us out of what makes us uniquely valuable—our judgment, insight, and hard-won expertise. As we refine our understanding of what AI can (and can't) do, we must double down on the skills that only humans bring. Here are three critical capabilities that will define the future—one where silicon and carbon work in true partnership. AI doesn't create—it recombines. It looks backward, pulling from what we already know, analyzing past data, and predicting likely patterns. This is its greatest strength—and its fundamental limitation. AI can churn out Shakespearean-style sonnets and books that sound like Dr. Seuss, but it can't invent a new literary form. It's convergent, not divergent. Only humans create something truly new. In one study, researchers compared the creative output of amateur writers—half worked with AI, half without. The AI-assisted stories were judged to be better written, more enjoyable, and less boring. But here's the catch: they were also significantly less original. AI improved the surface quality of writing but flattened the depth of creativity—pushing toward predictable, familiar ideas rather than bold, unconventional ones. In short, GenAI doesn't innovate—it reinforces groupthink. It can get you closer to best practice, but it will never get you to next practice. Radical innovation requires human ingenuity—the ability to imagine the impossible, to connect ideas that have never been connected before. Creativity isn't a computational function—it's a human experience. It's lived, felt, and shaped by our emotions, instincts, and intuition. If we lean too heavily on AI to do this work, we don't just risk recycling old ideas—we risk forgetting how to think beyond them. If we allow our creative skills to atrophy, we freeze the status quo and risk the future of innovation altogether. Some of history's greatest discoveries happened entirely by curious accident. Take Velcro. A Swiss engineer went for a walk with his dog and came home covered in burrs. Instead of brushing them off, he examined them under a microscope and discovered their tiny hook-like structures—a natural blueprint for a revolutionary fastener. Or insulin. Researchers removed a dog's pancreas for an unrelated experiment and noticed flies swarming around the sugar-rich urine. This accidental observation led to the discovery of insulin, a breakthrough that has saved millions of lives. And then there's penicillin, one of the most important medical advances in history. In 1928, bacteriologist Alexander Fleming left a petri dish out by mistake. When he returned, he noticed that mold had killed the surrounding bacteria. That accident sparked the antibiotic revolution, extending the average human lifespan by 23 years. None of these discoveries came from following a prompt. They came from human curiosity—the instinct to notice, explore, and wonder why. Curiosity isn't just a trait—it's a competitive advantage. Studies show that curious teams are more collaborative, more engaged, and more resilient. Algorithms cannot replace serendipity. If we delegate too much to our AI colleagues, we deaden our natural curiosity and lose the chance to discover answers to questions we didn't even know to ask. AI is taking over routine tasks but the thorniest problems—the ones that demand judgment, creativity, and teamwork—are still ours to solve. In a world too complex for any one person to have all the answers, collaboration is no longer just a skill, it's survival. AI is not like human collaboration, it's a transaction. Prompt in, answer out. Human collaboration is relational, not digital. It takes time to build, practice to nurture, and space to grow. It's embodied and experiential, interpersonal and intangible. Our social skills are our most important tools to reveal the divergent thinking the AI era desperately needs. I once worked with a CEO who admitted: 'We hire for technical skills—but we fire for lack of soft skills.' It never occurred to him that collaboration, like coding, is something that must be taught. And AI can't teach it. It can't show us how to listen deeply, challenge assumptions, or navigate disagreement. Sitting in a room with a chatbot is never going to move the needle on human skills. We can only learn that from and with each other. As Pinocchio's journey comes to an end, he finally becomes a 'real boy' by living, loving, losing and learning. But we don't live in a fairytale and AI will never be human. It's simply a tool forged by human ingenuity. As we make space for its contributions, let's not forget: we decide who is the puppet and who is the puppeteer.
