What is Human in the loop?
A designed review path for the cases the system is not confident about - not a fallback, and not an apology for the model.
Done properly, this is a design decision rather than a concession: the system decides what it is confident about, acts on that, and routes the rest to a person with enough context to resolve it in seconds rather than re-doing the work. The measure of whether it was designed or bolted on is how long a review takes.
It also determines what happens when the model is wrong, which is a question every deployment has to answer in writing before it goes live. An override path, an escalation route and a record of who decided what are not governance overhead - they are the reason the system is allowed to touch a process anyone audits.
| On this | Human in the loop | Full automation with an exception report |
|---|---|---|
| Who sees the uncertain cases | A person, at the moment it matters, with the evidence in front of them | Whoever reads the report, some time later |
| Cost of a review | Seconds, because the context travels with the case | Minutes, because the document has to be reopened |
| What the audit trail shows | Which cases a person decided, and on what basis | That an exception existed |
- When it is the right answer
- Always, on anything with a financial, safety or compliance consequence. The design question is not whether, it is where the confidence threshold sits.
- The service line that delivers this
- AI Document Intelligence
Four thousand supplier invoices a month, and three people typing them into the ERP. Month-end waits for them.
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If a term here is the one your board paper turns on, ask us about it.
We will send the entry, the evidence behind it, and the honest note about where it does not apply.
You get a reply within one working day, from the engineer who would do the work - not a sales sequence.