“Humans in the Loop: Exploring AI, Invisible Labour, and Digital Culture”

 

This blog presents a critical analysis of the film screening of Humans in the Loop, organized as part of our classroom activity and assigned by Dr. Dilip Barad Sir. The film explores the intricate relationship between artificial intelligence, human labour, and digital culture, focusing on how “humans in the loop” remain central to AI systems despite the appearance of automation. Through its narrative, visual style, and cinematic devices, the film raises pressing questions about algorithmic bias, epistemic hierarchies, the invisibility of labour, and the politics of representation.

In this analysis, the discussion is structured around three key themes: the socio-cultural embeddedness of AI and bias (Task 1), the visualization and political implications of labour under digital capitalism (Task 2), and the role of film form and aesthetic strategies in conveying philosophical concerns about digital culture and human-AI interaction (Task 3). Drawing on film theory, structuralist and formalist perspectives, Marxist critique, and representation studies, this blog aims to unpack how the film not only documents contemporary technological realities but also invites critical reflection on knowledge, power, and human experience in AI-mediated systems.

Task : 1

Critical Analysis: AI, Bias, and Epistemic Representation in Humans in the Loop

Humans in the Loop presents artificial intelligence not as a neutral computational system but as a socially embedded technology shaped by human power, culture, and knowledge hierarchies. Through its narrative of data labor and algorithmic decision-making, the film interrogates how technological systems reproduce ideological structures rather than transcend them. Using concepts from film studies—representation, ideology, and power relations—alongside Apparatus Theory, the film reveals that AI operates within existing social orders rather than outside them.

Algorithmic Bias as Culturally Situated

The narrative exposes algorithmic bias not as a technical malfunction but as a product of cultural and social positioning. The AI systems depicted in the film rely on human-labeled datasets generated by workers whose socioeconomic conditions shape the content and interpretation of knowledge. Rather than presenting bias as a glitch that engineers can simply fix, the film frames it as structurally embedded in the pipeline of data production.

From a representational standpoint, the film emphasizes that AI “sees” the world through mediated human perspectives. Scenes showing repetitive annotation work demonstrate how subjective judgments become codified into supposedly objective systems. This aligns with ideological critique in film theory: technology appears neutral while invisibly carrying dominant cultural assumptions. The narrative therefore reframes bias as an outcome of who produces knowledge, under what conditions, and for whose benefit.

The film’s visual style reinforces this argument. The framing of workers behind screens, often isolated and anonymized, contrasts with the authoritative presence of technological outputs. This cinematic contrast mirrors Apparatus Theory’s claim that technological systems naturalize ideology by concealing the mechanisms of production. Just as cinema positions viewers within ideological frameworks through its apparatus, AI systems in the film position users within prestructured categories shaped by unseen labor.

Epistemic Hierarchies and the Politics of Knowledge

A central theme in the film is epistemic hierarchy—whose knowledge is recognized as authoritative within technological systems. The narrative foregrounds a stark division between those who design and deploy AI systems and those who produce the knowledge that trains them. Data workers generate the interpretive labor necessary for AI functionality, yet their knowledge is rendered invisible or subordinate.

This dynamic illustrates a hierarchy between institutional knowledge (engineers, corporations, technological infrastructures) and embodied or localized knowledge (workers’ interpretations, cultural experience, and lived realities). The film suggests that technological systems privilege formalized, codified knowledge while marginalizing experiential insight. This reflects broader power relations in knowledge production: those who control technological frameworks determine what counts as truth.

From an ideological perspective, the film portrays AI as a mechanism that legitimizes dominant epistemologies while erasing the labor that sustains them. Workers’ contributions become abstracted into data points, transforming subjective interpretation into “objective” machine output. The invisibility of this process reinforces what film theory identifies as ideological naturalization—the presentation of historically produced structures as inevitable or neutral.

Apparatus Theory and Technological Ideology

Applying Apparatus Theory deepens this analysis. In classical film theory, the cinematic apparatus shapes perception by positioning viewers within a structured field of meaning that reproduces dominant ideology. Humans in the Loop extends this logic to digital technology: AI systems function as ideological apparatuses that organize knowledge, perception, and authority.

The film visually parallels cinematic spectatorship and algorithmic processing. Screens, interfaces, and data flows become framing devices that mediate reality. Just as cinema constructs meaning through selective representation, AI constructs knowledge through selective data interpretation. Both systems produce what appears as objective truth while embedding ideological assumptions within their structure.

By foregrounding labor conditions and knowledge production processes, the film disrupts the illusion of technological neutrality. It reveals that AI systems do not merely process information—they shape epistemic reality by determining what is visible, legible, and actionable. This mirrors Apparatus Theory’s central insight: technology is never purely technical but always ideological.

Power Relations and the Politics of Representation

The film ultimately situates AI within broader power relations. Representation becomes a site of control: those who design technological frameworks define categories, norms, and standards. Workers contribute knowledge but lack authority over how it is used or interpreted. This asymmetry reflects structural inequalities in global technological production.

By linking technological processes to labor, the narrative reframes AI as a social system rather than a computational tool. The film suggests that bias persists because power persists. Technology does not escape ideology; it operationalizes it.

Conclusion :

Through its depiction of data labor and algorithmic decision-making, Humans in the Loop challenges the myth of AI objectivity. The film reveals bias as culturally situated, exposes epistemic hierarchies embedded in technological systems, and frames AI as an ideological apparatus that reproduces power relations. By aligning cinematic representation with technological mediation, the narrative demonstrates that knowledge within AI is not discovered but constructed—shaped by social structures, labor conditions, and ideological frameworks.

Task : 2

Labor & the Politics of Cinematic Visibility in Humans in the Loop

The film offers a striking meditation on invisible labour under digital capitalism by foregrounding the human effort that sustains artificial intelligence systems while simultaneously showing how that labour is obscured, undervalued, and structurally constrained. Through its visual language and narrative framing, the film situates data annotation as a form of contemporary industrial work—fragmented, precarious, and emotionally taxing—while inviting viewers to critically reassess whose labour powers technological modernity.

Visualizing Invisible Labour

The film’s visual strategy makes the unseen visible. Repetitive framing of workers seated before screens emphasizes the mechanical rhythm of labelling tasks. The mise-en-scène—rows of workstations, sterile interiors, dim lighting—constructs an environment that mirrors industrial production lines, even though the labour is cognitive rather than physical. This aesthetic choice aligns with Marxist film theory’s understanding of cinema as a site where relations of production can be made perceptible.

Close shots of screens and cursor movements translate abstract computational processes into embodied human action. By lingering on gestures such as clicking, highlighting, and categorizing, the film foregrounds micro-decisions that collectively shape AI outputs. These visual repetitions convey both monotony and intensity, transforming what is typically imagined as automated efficiency into visible human strain.

Equally significant is the emotional register of labour. Workers’ expressions—fatigue, detachment, quiet frustration—suggest affective labour alongside cognitive work. The film depicts not only the extraction of time and skill but also the management of emotional endurance. From a cultural film theory perspective, this portrayal emphasizes labour as lived experience rather than abstract economic activity.

Cultural Valuation of Marginalized Work

The film suggests that digital capitalism systematically devalues the labour that makes technological systems possible. Workers perform essential interpretive tasks, yet their contributions remain structurally invisible. Their knowledge is absorbed into data infrastructures without recognition, authorship, or authority.

Marxist analysis helps clarify this dynamic: labour produces value, but that value is appropriated by institutions that control technological platforms. The film visually encodes this hierarchy through spatial separation between workers and technological outputs. Screens dominate the frame, while human figures appear small, repetitive, and interchangeable. This composition communicates commodification—the reduction of human interpretation into standardized units of production.

Representation and identity studies deepen this reading. The workers depicted belong to social positions typically excluded from narratives of technological innovation. By centering their labour, the film challenges dominant cultural assumptions that technological progress is driven solely by engineers or corporate actors. Instead, it reveals a stratified knowledge economy in which marginalized identities sustain systems from which they are excluded symbolically and materially.

Empathy, Critique, and Transformative Perception

The film does more than document labour conditions—it reorients perception. Through sustained attention to workers’ routines and subjectivities, it invites empathy by humanizing processes often imagined as automated. However, this empathy is not purely sentimental; it functions as a critical device that exposes structural inequalities.

Cinematic pacing plays a crucial role. The slow rhythm of repetitive work contrasts sharply with the ideological promise of technological acceleration. This temporal disjunction encourages viewers to question narratives of efficiency and innovation that obscure labour exploitation. The film thus produces what cultural theorists describe as critical spectatorship: an awareness of the social structures embedded in representation.

Ultimately, the film gestures toward transformation by destabilizing dominant perceptions of digital labour. By revealing that AI systems depend on undervalued human effort, it reframes technological advancement as a social process shaped by class relations and global inequalities. The act of making labour visible becomes itself a political intervention.

Labour, Representation, and Power Under Digital Capitalism

Through Marxist and cultural film theory lenses, the film portrays digital capitalism as a system that commodifies not only physical effort but also perception, judgment, and emotion. Labour becomes fragmented into micro-tasks, while representation functions as a mechanism of ideological concealment: viewers and users encounter seamless technological outputs rather than the human labour behind them.

By reversing this concealment, the film challenges dominant narratives of automation and technological neutrality. It reveals that digital infrastructures are sustained by human bodies, cultural interpretations, and unequal power relations. The politics of cinematic visibility therefore mirrors the politics of labour itself—what is seen, valued, and recognized within systems of production.

Conclusion:

The film visualizes invisible labour by transforming data annotation into a cinematic subject, exposing its emotional intensity and structural marginalization. Through its representational strategies, it critiques the cultural devaluation of labour under digital capitalism while fostering critical empathy in viewers. By making hidden work perceptible, the film not only documents labour but also reshapes how technological systems—and the human effort behind them—are understood.

Task : 3

Film Form, Structure, and Digital Culture in Humans in the Loop

Humans in the Loop uses cinematic form as a critical lens to examine the philosophical and social implications of digital culture and human-AI interaction. Through camera work, editing, sequencing, sound, and the contrast between natural and digital spaces, the film communicates the complexities of labour, identity, and technological mediation.

Natural Imagery vs. Digital Spaces

One of the most striking formal choices in the film is its juxtaposition of natural and digital environments. Wide shots of open landscapes, human gestures, and organic spaces contrast sharply with claustrophobic frames of data labs, screens, and artificial interfaces.

This visual opposition operates as a system of signification (film semiotics) that conveys the tension between human experience and technologically mediated perception. Natural imagery symbolizes embodied, contextual knowledge—experience grounded in the physical and social world—while digital spaces represent abstraction, codification, and algorithmic control.

For example, scenes of workers annotating images of natural phenomena highlight how human interpretation translates the richness of lived reality into discrete data points. This contrast raises broader philosophical concerns about the limits of AI in capturing subjective experience and underscores how human knowledge remains essential within digital systems.

Camera Techniques and Editing

The film employs a combination of close-ups, over-the-shoulder shots, and high-angle perspectives to communicate the immersive and isolating aspects of digital labour. Close-ups of workers’ hands and screens emphasize precision, repetition, and embodied labour, while high-angle shots of the lab create a sense of surveillance and systematization.

Editing choices—rhythmic cuts between workers, AI interfaces, and outcomes—highlight temporal fragmentation. The pace of editing mirrors the repetitive, segmented nature of annotation work, reinforcing viewers’ awareness of labour as both cognitively and emotionally demanding. Cross-cutting between human gestures and algorithmic outputs semiotically links labour to the consequences of technological action, showing that human interpretation is inseparable from machine “intelligence.”

Sound and Aesthetic Choices

Sound design in Humans in the Loop also plays a critical role in shaping perception. Ambient office noises—clicks, keystrokes, murmured conversations—contrast with digital sound cues like notification pings or AI-generated voiceovers. This sonic layering represents the coexistence and tension between human and machine activity, emphasizing the human presence that underpins technological systems.

The absence of music in some sequences amplifies the monotony of labour, creating an immersive, almost meditative experience for the viewer. This aesthetic strategy aligns with formalist theory, showing how sound—or silence—constructs meaning and emotional resonance without explicit exposition.

Labour, Identity, and Digital Culture

The interplay of visual and auditory codes communicates philosophical questions about the human condition in a digital age. By situating embodied labour within highly mediated digital spaces, the film semiotically encodes identity as relational and contingent: the worker’s knowledge, judgment, and affective engagement are central to AI functionality yet rendered invisible within broader technological narratives.

Natural imagery and spatial contrast remind viewers of the human scale of work and knowledge, challenging assumptions of automation and technological neutrality. Cinematic techniques emphasize that digital culture is not simply a technical domain but a sociocultural system shaped by human effort, interpretation, and positionality.

Structuralist and Narrative Implications

From a structuralist perspective, the film constructs meaning through recurring motifs and oppositions: nature vs. technology, visibility vs. invisibility, labour vs. automation. Narrative sequencing highlights cause-effect relationships between human annotation, AI decision-making, and social consequences, creating a semiotic chain that exposes the interdependence of humans and machines.

By analyzing these codes, it becomes clear that film form itself functions as an argument: it visually and aurally demonstrates that digital culture is socially mediated, morally contingent, and epistemically situated.

Conclusion:

Humans in the Loop leverages cinematic form to communicate deep philosophical concerns about digital culture, human labour, and AI. Through the interplay of natural and digital spaces, strategic camera work, editing rhythms, and layered sound, the film conveys the embodied, interpretive, and relational nature of knowledge in technological systems. Structuralist and formalist analysis reveals that these aesthetic choices are not merely stylistic but essential to understanding how labour, identity, and digital culture intersect, making the invisible visible and the abstract concrete.

References : 

 Barad, Dilip. (2026). WORKSHEET FILM SCREENING ARANYA SAHAY'S HUMANS IN THE LOOP. 10.13140/RG.2.2.11775.06568. 

 Shorts Now. “Artificial Intelligence Explained: Human in the Loop Movie in Hindi | AI Aur Human Ka Future.” YouTube, 9 Nov. 2025, www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-vVMk-rytM.