What does human oversight record, and what does it miss?#
The process records that oversight happened. It cannot record whether it did. An approval given after careful review and one clicked in four seconds look identical in the audit trail. A study of 41 oversight policies found people were often unable to perform the oversight functions those policies assumed.
How does regulation frame human oversight?#
By capability. Article 14 of the EU AI Act requires that people overseeing a high-risk system can understand its capacities and limitations, stay aware of automation bias, interpret its output, and intervene or stop it. After the AI Omnibus, those obligations apply from December 2027 for most high-risk systems and August 2028 for AI built into regulated products.
Human oversight of AI therefore has to be engineered. Making someone decision-ready is the work; putting a name on the process is not.
