Human-in-the-AI-loop? Or AI-in-the-Human-Loop?
A thought¹ about the phrase "Human-in-the-AI-loop" and that this feels like we're just hanging on to the outside of this AI hamster wheel / racing car as it tears uncontrollably out of the gates... the AI has all the power and we're on the outside of the loop. At best we're playing goal keeper, the responsible adult in the room... but it's anxiety inducing. Stuff is going to go wrong, stuff is going wrong right now, and we're only a little human barely being kept in the (AI) loop.
And perhaps illegal too or at least not aligned with legality... when this centaur² makes a mistake it's not going to be the AI corporation CEO in the dock, it's going to be the worker who was meant to be goal keeping, meant to be the responsible adult keeping the reckless AI in check and looking after it.
The "Human-in-the-AI-loop" model of AI seems fraught, stressful, broken.
"AI-in-the-Human-Loop" seems a lot more grounded, calmer and legally aligned. The human is in control at all times, and the human is responsible.
It's also more playful. When you can bring in a source of creative energy within your loop, under your control, it's great fun, and perhaps even more so when they are / it is a liability! The otherwise reckless ideas that are produced are now created in a safe space, explored, laughed over, and then discarded or honed and crafted into the final project.
That centaur sounds a lot happier!
Notes
¹ Perhaps hyperbolic. And also not a new idea. A quick search showed "AI-in-the-Human-Loop" existed since at least Aug 2025 and I know I heard it somewhere else recently. I wanted to blog some quick thoughts about how different it makes me feel when I think about it through that lens of "AI-in-the-Human-Loop" as opposed to the "Human-in-the-AI-loop" where the AI is doing its thing and the human isn't even really in the loop at all.
² Centaur is a human + computer combination.
³ This post was triggered after watching Anil's talk on taking the Red AI Pill or Blue AI Pill and thinking that another dimension of thinking about AI is that the red pill is ... and then I lost my train of thought, though it was something about the red pill being waking up to the genuine utility and limits of AI and the blue pill being the delusion that is easy to slip into when using one.
⁴ No AI was used in the making of this blog post.