Glossary
Human in the loop
An AI design pattern where humans retain control over decisions even when AI is doing most of the work.
In customer support, human in the loop means four concrete things: configurable confidence thresholds, approval gates for sensitive actions, full audit logs of AI behavior, and bounded tool surfaces. Vendors who claim human in the loop without these mechanisms are using marketing language for a system that does not actually keep humans in control.
Related terms
- AI Agent: An autonomous software agent that can resolve customer support tickets without a human in the loop.
- Approval gate: A required human approval step for specific AI actions regardless of confidence score.
- Audit log: A per-ticket record of every AI decision, including the reply, the action, the confidence, and the source citations.