For Heads-of · Practitioner
Human-in-the-Loop (HITL)
A design pattern where human judgment and decision-making are retained in the process, with AI providing recommendations or automating parts of a workflow but not full autonomy.
- human in the loop
- HITL
- automation
- oversight
Levels of Automation
Full automation (AI decides alone), AI decides with human review (human checks before action), human decides with AI input (human makes decision informed by AI), to human-only (no AI involvement).
Risk Mitigation
HITL reduces risk of AI errors causing harm by keeping humans responsible for high-stakes decisions. Humans can catch model failures, edge cases, and ethical concerns.
Governance Best Practice
HITL is often required in regulated industries (healthcare, finance, legal) where autonomous AI decisions are not acceptable. The human reviewer must be trained to recognize and override poor AI recommendations.