How does artificial intelligence interact with a developing economy, particularly at its lowest rung? Humans in the Loop hits like the casual threats you hear in corporate offices: “Everyone’s replaceable. This is the AI era,” echoing memories from when computers began replacing paper and people. The immediate question then, as I recall, was: “Who will operate them?” Okay, let’s face it. There is no running away from technology. It will only get sharper and smarter, but will human beings grow more intelligent alongside it? In Aranya Sahay’s quiet yet powerful feature, we meet a sharp woman whose natural intellect is tested as she struggles to earn a livelihood.
Set in India’s rural Jharkhand, the film opens with Nehma (Sonal Madhushankar), who belongs to the Oraon tribe, failing a CAPTCHA test in a village recruitment drive. She fidgets her fingers, applying human logic as she identifies traffic lights, taxis, and zebra crossings. It is important to mention her caste identity in light of her marital status (or its legitimacy at all). Nehna’s ex-husband, Ritesh (Vikas Gupta), seeks custody of their children, one of them a toddler. A regular job is the only way Nehma would stand a chance against the upper-caste man who lives in the state capital, Ranchi.
Nehma grew up in the village near the jungle. She understands the pulse of nature. When she takes her daughter Dhaanu to pick sweet potatoes, she teaches her how to collect them in a way that the surrounding vegetation remains unaffected.
Therefore, it’s amusing when the job Nehma seeks and eventually wins is in an AI labeling center. The place employs many women from the region with basic computer knowledge. With foreign clients outsourcing digital labour, these women contribute to advancing technology without surrendering their intelligence. At one point in Humans in the Loop, she asserts that a leaf-eating caterpillar cannot be labeled as a pest because it actually protects the health of the plant. “If the client says it is a pest, then it is a pest,” reverts Alka, Nehma’s supervisor, after a humiliating call with her white bosses.
Where does this blind functioning leave Nehma’s intuition? In what is perhaps the film’s most arresting moment, she states, “AI is like a child. If we feed it wrong information, it will learn wrong things.”
In another brilliant scene, Humans in the Loop builds gold-standard drama with Alka attempting to create an AI-generated portrait of Nehma. It’s an act that visibly unsettles the latter. The moment strips away the facade of technology’s neutrality and lays bare the homogenization embedded within it. A woman, unique in identity and experience, is reduced to an output generated by a prompt. Can AI be trained like a child to respect emotions? Or should we accept being nothing more than statistics, stripped of individuality? Sahay’s film raises many disturbing questions that challenge our entrenched values.
Humans in the Loop is not a film that is performative. The actors behave in a way that you believe they have been in the film’s surroundings all their lives. Sonal Madhushankar puts in a stellar show that way, and I could also feel a lot from Gita Guha, who becomes Nehma’s kind boss. As the young Dhaanu, Ridhima Singh finds the right balance of rebellion and nervous energy.
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The film further introduces a porcupine as a metaphor for the natural order, becoming a reminder that the world’s beats are not ours to control. Sahay’s mature take on artificial intelligence resists sensationalism. Today, AI is often treated as a slur, and I, too, have been guilty of labelling it that way. But, revisiting how I started, is absolute resistance to change the right approach? If technology empowers indigenous communities to earn a livelihood, how can it be inherently wrong? In filmmaking, if technology helps on-set workers rest easier at night, is that a curse or a blessing?
In what is one of the most thought-provoking films from Hindi cinema in recent years, Humans in the Loop made me reflect on a range of questions and ideas. I could conclude that no matter how much technology evolves, human relationships follow the same grammar. There will always be an active connection between living beings. As for AI and everything else that might follow, the conversation should intensify only when we begin to eat it, wear it, or live inside it.
Rating: ★★★★★
Humans in the Loop is now playing in select cinemas across India.
