Human-In-The-Loop: The Decisions L&D Cannot Delegate

"Human-in-the-loop is often described as a review step. A way to check AI output before it goes live. That description undersells what is really at stake. So let's not forget we are the bosses! In L&D, human-in-the-loop is about ownership: Who decides what matters. Who decides what can be removed. Who decides how much complexity is helpful and when it becomes a burden."

"AI makes content creation fast and inexpensive. That is undeniably useful. It is also something senior L&D leaders should pause and reflect on. When speed becomes the dominant metric, L&D quietly shifts its focus from designing learning to producing content. The question moves from "What does the learner need to do differently?" to "How quickly can we create this?" Efficiency on its own does not improve learning. Without judgment, it simply creates more noise."

"L&D has never lacked tools. What it has often lacked is restraint: deciding what, when, and how. Those who have lived through multiple cycles of change will recognize the pattern. Flash, rapid authoring tools, mobile learning, microlearning, ever-evolving learning platforms, AR/VR boom. Each wave arrived with promise. And once again, L&D is being told that everything is about to change."

L&D has repeatedly adopted new tools but often failed to exercise restraint in choosing what, when, and how to use them. Past waves—Flash, rapid authoring, mobile learning, microlearning, evolving platforms, AR/VR—brought progress and new challenges. AI accelerates content creation and risks shifting priorities toward speed and volume over meaningful learning outcomes. Human-in-the-loop is a deliberate design choice that preserves human ownership, judgment, and decisions about relevance, removal, and appropriate complexity. Instructional design responsibilities are changing as automation grows, requiring focus on what learners must do differently rather than on rapid content production.

Read at eLearning Industry