Human-in-the-Loop Is Not a Governance Strategy

Short summary

Most human-in-the-loop implementations are rubber stamps that shift liability to humans without providing real oversight. The author argues presence alone isn't governance—what matters is whether the human can actually change the outcome. They propose surfacing decision summaries instead of raw payloads, interrupting only on genuinely dangerous actions (irreversible, large blast radius, low confidence), and treating some actions as never-safe-for-human-review.

• •HITL as shipped is a liability transfer mechanism, not governance
• •Show decision summaries (intent, risk, confidence) not raw payloads to reviewers
• •Interrupt only on reversibility, blast radius, and agent confidence—not every write

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