MADINAH: The Culinary Arts and Hospitality Club in Madinah on Wednesday hosted Cooking Challenge 2 as part of its winter activities in the region.

The event celebrated the distinctive culinary heritage of Madinah while enhancing the skills of local chefs, the Saudi Press Agency reported.

From a pool of 350 club members, two contestants were selected to compete in preparing Madinah’s traditional kabli dish, which was judged by a panel of experts. 

The evaluation criteria included taste, adherence to food health and safety protocols, professional safety standards, creativity and innovation, quality standards, and mastery of cooking techniques. 

The challenge featured Chef Alaa Al-Ahmadi and Chef Asmaa Al-Attas with the latter emerging as the winner.

Chef Enayat Khan, head of the Culinary Arts and Hospitality Club in Madinah, explained that the club’s mission is to unite chefs in Madinah under one platform to exchange knowledge and expertise. 

A key focus is preserving traditional Madinah dishes as well as Saudi cuisine as a whole.

Khan highlighted the club’s diverse pool of national talent, encompassing professionals and passionate amateurs, and expressed the club’s ambition to display Madinah’s culinary excellence on the global stage.

Chef Abdul Wahab Al-Dawi, director of public relations and marketing at the Culinary Arts Club, emphasized the richness and diversity of Saudi cuisine, shaped by the Kingdom’s geography and the integration of animal, marine, and agricultural products. 

He noted that Saudi cuisine has made a notable impact at international exhibitions, reflecting its growing global recognition. 

He said the club continues to host culinary events aimed at enhancing the skills of aspiring chefs, nurturing culinary talent, and discovering new creators in the Madinah region.

JEDDAH: Artificial intelligence cannot replace the creativity of human beings in literature, according to an expert attending the Jeddah Book Fair 2024.

Dr. Anas Al-Ghamdi, an academic, researcher and author specializing in AI, made the statement in a discussion during a symposium titled: “Artificial Intelligence and the Future of the Book.”

The session was moderated by Mohammed Basalama, an entrepreneur in the cultural sector, who opened the symposium by raising a few questions about the impact of artificial intelligence in the book sector, asking: Will AI be a partner that enhances creativity or a competitor that threatens the human values of literary texts?

He mentioned the main themes of the symposium, which included: the role of AI in improving writing and publishing, its impact on literary creativity and the human value of books, as well as the ethical and legal challenges related to the ownership of produced texts, in addition to using AI as a tool to enhance innovation rather than compete with it.

Al-Ghamdi replied by saying that no doubt AI has become an integral part of life and it can provide a huge amount of information to people in no time, but it cannot create special feelings and the free flow of imagination as human authors do in their writings.

“If we do not use it, others will. Of course, certain fields will benefit by using AI, but it cannot create great literature,” he said.

Al-Ghamdi said that there is a role for AI in enhancing the work of publishing houses by improving marketing, production, and sales. 

But, he said, machine translation still suffers from emotional gaps, saying: “When you read a text translated by a machine, you feel the translator’s feelings, not the writer’s.”

The symposium explored how modern technology can reshape the writing and publishing experience, emphasizing the need to use AI as a tool to support human creativity.  

It also discussed the ethical and professional challenges related to the ownership of texts produced by AI, while presenting innovative visions for employing this technology to achieve a sustainable future that combines human creativity and technological innovation.

Al-Ghamdi affirmed that AI is not a substitute for human creativity, but a tool that can enrich this creativity if used properly.