Glossary
Definition
Human-in-the-loop
A design principle where a human validates the critical decisions or actions of an AI system before execution.
Human-in-the-loop (HITL) places a human checkpoint in an automated process: the AI prepares, the human decides. Applied to AI agents, it means an email drafted by the agent is only sent after review, a proposed payment only executed after approval.
It is both a growing regulatory requirement (the AI Act mandates human oversight for high-risk systems) and operational common sense: AI autonomy should be calibrated by the reversibility and exposure of each action, not by how much you trust the model.
Further reading
Sovereign AI, in practice
Every AI model, deployed on your infrastructure, with your documents connected.