Something the reviewer can change
The specification names something the reviewer can change, not only a decision they can approve. The route for disagreeing has been used at least once in the last quarter.
What is an intervention specification?
An intervention specification replaces “human in the loop” with six answerable questions about who can change the system.
An intervention specification states six things: who may intervene, on what signal, with what information, with authority over which part of the system's state, how fast, and what happens when they disagree. Every oversight clause should come down to one.
Ethotechnics retires “human in the loop” as the name of a control, because a person can be named in the loop and still be unable to change anything.
A hypothetical case. A payments hold queue names two on-call reviewers. It names the fraud-score signal that routes cases to them, the customer history they see, their authority to release or freeze the account, a four-minute budget per case, and the route to the duty manager when they disagree with the model.
In the glossary: Intervention specification.
Mechanism, drawn
Named in the loop, or able to change state
A reviewer named in the loop can approve what the system shows them and change nothing. A specification answers six questions, and the reviewer counts as a control only if the answers end in a change to the system's state. The lower row is the payments hold queue from the example above.
In practice
What to look for
Oversight as a role and a meeting
Oversight is specified as a role and a meeting. The reviewer sees a score without the case behind it, cannot change a policy, and has no set route when they disagree.
Changes reviewers made
Report the share of oversight points with a complete specification, and how many changes reviewers made per thousand reviews, alongside the median review time.
Where the standards use it:
- Law IX: oversight is a control only if state can change (doctrine). The law that turns a claim of oversight into a specification someone can test.
- Meaningful control (eval). The Law IX question set, applied to each review point in a deployment.
- Meaningful control (glossary). The condition an intervention specification is written to establish.
Why retire “human in the loop”?
Because it names a position, not a capability. A person can be in the loop and still lack the information, authority, time, or permission to disagree. Then they are not part of the control system.
Does every automated step need one?
No. It is needed wherever someone claims oversight. A step with no oversight claimed needs no specification, but an assurance document cannot then claim oversight for it.