by Soumya Mathew
HITL or Human in The Loop is the process of integrating human intelligence with automated systems, like AI, to enhance its accuracy and improve its performance.
Humans in the Loop, the film, is a glimpse into the lives of countless women in Jharkhand, whose labour is as extractable as it is dispensable and whose lived realities and experiences are shaped by the work they do – data labelling.
At the center of the film, directed by Aranya Sahay, is the idea evoked several times through words and visuals – AI is like a child. The premise being, Artificial Intelligence learns what you teach it, like a child does. AI is quick to learn, by the way. One quick swish of the pen drive into the device, one click and AI produces the information it has been fed, right away.
The problem is: it doesn’t know to discern between correct and incorrect information. What is a pest for a foreigner speaking out of a screen tile in Alka’s (the manager at a data labelling office) laptop is a caterpillar, a harmless little worm, for Nehma, the protagonist.“They only eat the rotten part of the leaves, they don’t harm…” she says.
At the center of the film, directed by Aranya Sahay, is the idea evoked several times through words and visuals – AI is like a child.
This story of Nehma traces her life as she begins working as a data labeler to power AI performance. Freshly separated after a live-in relationship and fighting to retain custody of her children – an older daughter, Dhaanu and a toddler son, Guntu — this is also the story of Nehma’s evolving relationship with her children.
Sonal Madhushankar, who plays Nehma has an interesting take on the character’s role as a mother in the film. Following a screening of the film at Breakthrough’s Delhi office on 4th December, in a virtual Q&A with the team, Sonal says, “Nehma is different. She is a selfish mother – she wants to aspire for herself… and so the character is not a run-of-the-mill representation of mothers as sacrificial.”
Yet, the complexities in this mother-daughter relationship may not seem as uncommon to many. In the story, frustrated with her strict mother’s decision to shift back home from the city of Ranchi, Dhaanu attempts to take Guntu and leave, depending on Google Maps through the forests. Here, she is like a lot of us: getting lost, especially with Google Maps leading her astray.
Sonal says, “Nehma is different. She is a selfish mother – she wants to aspire for herself… and so the character is not a run-of-the-mill representation of mothers as sacrificial.”
How she traces her way back from the forests to the main road makes her pause her plans to run off to her father and paves the way for an attempt to settle into the uneasiness of living inside the spaces of routes that Google Maps don’t know of. It may be difficult, but she now knew how to find her way back if she was lost, even if there was no phone in hand.
Juxtaposed against these simmering tensions at home is Nehma’s fight with reality– during an exercise of agriculture-related labeling, Nehma and the other women are explained that the “pests” on trees and plants will be destroyed by AI-powered machines. Nehma rebels. She refuses to label the caterpillars as pests.
But her manager, Alka, scolds her when she attempts to explain the friendly nature of the caterpillar to her, “Client agar bolta hain ye pest hain… to ye pest hain.” This scene is telling, in how the labour of Adivasi women like Nehma is mined for enhancing AI functioning, yet the model refuses to actually note the contextual, lived knowledge women like her come with.
Humans in the Loop, the film, is a glimpse into the lives of countless women in Jharkhand, whose labour is as extractable as it is dispensable and whose lived realities and experiences are shaped by the work they do…
In the Q&A, we also got a chance to catch up with Gita Guha, the actor who essayed this character in the film, on the dichotomy in Alka’s character. On one hand, Alka talks about the great responsibility the women have on their hands – which is to feed information into AI, and on the other, she is quick to adhere to the client’s demands.
Reflecting on this, Gita says that her brief for the scene was to go for what a corporate agency would have conventionally said. Yet at the same time, as the film progresses, you see Alka’s humanity in how she softens her gaze towards Nehma, who is trying to bring in an indigenous standpoint to the information being fed into AI, she says.
Alka’s character, with all her flaws, is trying to exist in a world where she does not lose her humanity yet is bound by the structures set by big agencies, Gita explains. “Alka needs a job at the end of the day too,” she adds. The actor’s thoughtful commentary reminded us of the many pitfalls of the feminisation of labour—the precarious, unpredictable conditions within which many women earn their wages.
In this scene where Alka speaks to Nehma, now cognizant of how she wanted to bring her intelligence, gentleness and the indigenous-tribal knowledge– a standpoint no less important even though structurally marginalised, Nehma breaks down in silence.
This scene is telling, in how it is a moving commentary on how caste, class, colour affect identity and how in turn, identity determines visibility and mainstream knowledge. Will the world know enough to see you, know you? Nehma knows AI learns what you tell it, so she attempts to see if there is a way to tell AI to see you then, in ways you’d wish to and not what is presumed of you.
Her attempts shift her perspective towards her daughter. In a moment of vulnerability (that we may all relate with as we navigate our messy, gnarly relationships with our mothers) she tells her, “… I just did not know I could be wrong too.”
Nehma knows AI learns what you tell it, so she attempts to see if there is a way to tell AI to see you then, in ways you’d wish to and not what is presumed of you.
Humans in the Loop is just that: a commentary on the veracity of our worldviews and the many, many layers of history, context and lived realities that AI, the child, is still too primitive to get a grasp of. After all, the child is still crawling, at best.
