The Human
Circuit Breaker.
"Meaningful Human Control" is not just a rubber stamp. It requires the cognitive capacity to intervene. Design your oversight architecture below to meet Article 14 (EU AI Act) standards.
Human-in-the-Loop
The system cannot execute a decision without active human confirmation. Required for lethal autonomous weapons and high-stakes judicial sentencing recommendations.
Friction Cost
High
Human-on-the-Loop
The system executes automatically, but a human supervisor can intervene or override in real-time. Standard for algorithmic trading, autonomous driving, and content moderation.
Friction Cost
Medium
Human-out-of-the-Loop
The system executes without possibility of real-time intervention. Generally prohibited for high-risk use cases under the EU AI Act unless specific safety variances are granted.
Friction Cost
None
Oversight Design Principle: The "Bias of Automation"
Research shows that humans monitoring highly reliable systems eventually suffer from "automation bias"—they stop verifying outputs and simply click "Approve."
Regulatory Requirement: You must prove your human reviewers are not just "rubber stamping." This requires:
Regulatory Requirement: You must prove your human reviewers are not just "rubber stamping." This requires:
- Adversarial testing of reviewers
- Forced "cognitive pauses"
- Detailed explanation interfaces
Article 14 EU AI Act: Human Oversight Requirements
Design Phase Requirements
- • Identify critical decision points where human intervention is necessary
- • Ensure user interface enables effective monitoring and comprehension
- • Provide technical documentation on system limitations
- • Implement real-time alerts for anomalous behavior
Deployment Phase Requirements
- • Continuous monitoring of human oversight effectiveness
- • Regular audits of override rates and response times
- • Training programs for human operators on system risks
- • Incident reporting when human control fails