AI in the Loop

"Human in the loop."

Sounds responsible. Sounds safe. Describes almost nothing.

Watch what actually happens. AI generates a report. Human skims it. Human approves it. Ship.

The human was present. The human was not thinking.

MIT researchers found something uncomfortable this year. When people use AI first and think second, their brains stay checked out. Even after they stop using AI.

Starting passive means staying passive.

I felt this. I was building a data pipeline in dbt. A stack I didn't know well. The AI service went down. I stared at transformation syntax I had technically written and couldn't figure out how my own system worked.

The code was mine. The understanding wasn't.

That's when I started using a different phrase: AI in the loop.

Not a rebranding. A reordering.

You think first. You frame the problem. You form a hypothesis. Then AI enters your process. You're reviewing against something you built, not into a void.

Same four words. Opposite power structure.

"Human in the loop" asks: Did someone check this?

"AI in the loop" asks: Did someone think first?

One is a compliance checkbox. The other is a cognitive architecture.

I don't think there's another serious way to engage with AI long-term. The tool that amplifies your thinking and the tool that replaces it look identical from the outside.

The difference is sequence.

The question isn't whether AI is in your workflow. It's whether you're still in yours.