Aranya Sahay's Humans in the Loop was the pick for this edition of the SCREEN Film Club at the National Centre of Performing Arts (NCPA), Mumbai. On Monday evening, a packed Little Theatre watched the critically acclaimed and award-winning film, which was followed by an audience Q&A session with the filmmaker, moderated by Indian Express film critic Shubhra Gupta. Sahay revealed that the inspiration for the story came from former Indian Express journalist Karisma Mehrotra's July 2022 article in the publication Fifty Two about adivasi women in Jharkhand working as data labellers in their region for an American Artificial Intelligence company. Sahay found a striking parallel between how AI has built and how kids are raised. "When our children are growing up, we teach them how to differentiate between colours and objects. Then we force our morality on the children," said Sahay, adding, "If this job is akin to parenting, can AI be looked at as a child? There are two schools of thought. First, whatever you teach a child by the age of five is what manifests in different stages of their life. But there's also a school of thought that a child is born with 300 odd patterns. So if we apply that to our algorithms, is AI really a clean slate? Or is it born with the prejudices, knowledge systems, and strengths of its ancestors, which is us?" The title, Humans in the Loop, is picked from the AI lexicon 'human in the loop', which refers to the practice of there being a human in every loop while building AI for quality control. By making 'human' plural, Sahay shines a light on the human story running parallel to the AI one - Nehma, a single mother, fresh off separation from her husband, raises a rebellious daughter and an infant son while working in the data labelling company. The mother and the daughter aren't connected just by blood, but also because their energies attract a certain mysterious porcupine in the jungle. The mother used to play with the porcupine in her childhood. And when she returns to her native village, her daughter also encounters a porcupine who guides her way out of the jungle when she's lost. Sahay listed three reasons why he chose a porcupine as the motif - "two reasons are serious, one is not." "The tribes have totems, ancestral deities. I don't want to draw a parallel, but how kuldevtas and kuldevis in Hindus act as your guardian spirits. Porcupines and other animals, and even fruits and vegetables, are the totems for these tribes," he reasoned. Also Read: Humans in the Loop explores how AI clashes with traditional belief systems Another porcupine trait that worked in the favour of the film is the fact that they're one of the shiest creatures in the jungle. "When Nehma is younger, she has a relationship with the shiest creature in the jungle. What does that mean? She's far more connected to nature than people of her own tribe. Which means she's far more connected to herself," pointed out. But, what's the non-serious answer? "I love the band called Porcupine Tree," said Sahay, as the audience laughed out loud.
