AI Vocabulary · 05 Agents
What is Human in the Loop?
A person reviews or approves what the AI does before it counts.
Human in the loop means a person sits at a defined point in an AI workflow and checks, corrects or approves the work before it has an effect: before an email goes out, a payment is made, a text is published or a decision about a person is taken.
It is the most practical safeguard against hallucinations, misunderstandings and agents going off track. It only works if the person actually reviews; a reflexive "approve" is not oversight.
Why it matters for you
Decide in advance where the human checkpoints are, based on risk. Internal drafts may need none; anything external, financial, legal or about people should have one.
Own it
Keeping a human in the loop keeps responsibility, and judgement, with you. It is also what the EU expects for higher-risk uses under human oversight.
Where it comes from
The term comes from modelling, simulation and military systems, where it described setups in which a person takes part in the running process, for example in flight simulators or weapons control (Wikipedia). Machine learning adopted it for humans who label, review or correct a model's work, and agents made it an everyday design question.
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