The Material Cloud Film Festival I Humans in The Loop
The Marie Skłodowska-Curie project LIBRA, supported by the KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory, the Swedish Red Cross, ForumCiv, Digital Futures and the Centre for Anthropocene History proudly announce The Material Cloud Film Festival, a three-night film festival exploring the often unseen material realities behind artificial intelligence, including labour conditions, extractive supply chains, and power concentration.
As AI expands into nearly every sector of society, it is frequently framed as clean, efficient and intangible. Yet behind its sleek interfaces lie vast infrastructures, hidden workforces and resource-intensive systems that raise urgent ethical and political questions. Through film screenings and expert-led discussions, the festival invites audiences to ask: What lies behind the cloud?
Each evening features a carefully selected film exploring a different dimension of AI. Topics range from human labour and bias in training data to mineral extraction, contamination, and the environmental and emotional costs of sustaining algorithmic systems. All events are open to the public and free of charge.
The first movie of the film festival is "Humans in the Loop" (India, 72'), by Aranya Sahay. The film's producer, Mathivanan Rajendran, will be present online to give a brief introduction before the screening. Doors open at 17.15, screening starts at 17.30
“Humans in the Loop” tells the story of a woman working as human annotator of AI models and questioning the biases behind them. Inspired by a 2022 article by journalist Karishma Mehrotra in ''FiftyTwo'' titled "Human Touch", the film sheds light on AI bias and its disproportionate impact on women in technology. It highlights the contributions of women in the field of data annotation and algorithmic development while questioning the growing intersection of AI and marginalised communities.
