Human-in-the-Loop is the AI job no one asked for

Human-in-the-Loop is the AI job no one asked for.

I write a note for someone I respect. Clean, thoughtful. Not a strategy. Just a note.

I ask AI to draft it into an email. And immediately, I feel the drag.

You see, the email comes back fast. Structured. Polished. Technically good. The drag isn't that it's bad. It's that it's almost great. Almost.

The tone is 80% there... but not mine. One sentence is slightly off, but I have to reread the whole thing to find it. It says something I agree with, but wouldn't say that way.

So I edit. Then reread. Then second-guess what's AI versus what's me. Then rewrite chunks anyway.

Not just for writing. For everything.

An AI can generate the app. The code compiles. The features work. But taste has to live inside the process, not just the output. It comes to life in the thousands of micro-decisions you make along the way.

When you build from scratch, you're following intent forward. When you review AI-built product, you're reverse-engineering a machine's guess at your taste.

Evaluating: Is this right? Is this how I'd do it? What's subtly off? What's missing that I can't name yet?

Creation is lightning to the brain. Auditing is quicksand.

The research is catching up. Engineering teams report the same pattern: AI makes writing code easy, but checking and shipping it becomes a full time, mostly soul-crushing, job.

AI gets you most of the way, but the last 30% is a slog and often means a slower, less fulfilling overall flow.

We replaced creation cost with verification cost.

And verification is more expensive per unit.

This is where I find balance.

Don't start with AI. Start with intent.

Then bring the AI along for the adventure. Not to do the work for you to, just so you can grade it at the end.

Because once you lose the reins of intent, you're not refining taste. You're reverse-engineering meaning from foreign clay.

And that's where the soul disappears.