Human Oversight is a mandatory risk mitigation measure under the EU AI Act that requires high-risk AI systems to be designed and deployed with effective technical and organizational measures allowing human individuals to monitor operation, intervene, and, where necessary, override or halt the system.

This principle asserts that automation in high-stakes domains must not lead to the abdication of human judgment and responsibility. Human oversight is the critical "human-in-the-loop" (or "human-on-the-loop") mechanism that ensures AI remains a tool under human direction, rather than an autonomous authority. It is not merely about having a person present, but about equipping that person with the right tools, information, authority, and training to exercise meaningful control. Effective oversight is designed to catch and correct system errors, prevent automation bias, and ensure decisions align with contextual, ethical, and legal norms that may be beyond the AI's programmed understanding.

To be considered effective under the Act, human oversight must be built on several pillars:

Interpretability Support: Providing the human overseer with intelligible information from the AI system, including clear explanations of its recommendations (per explainability requirements) and an indication of its confidence level.

Actionable Intervention Capacity: Granting the overseer the unambiguous authority and practical ability to reverse, ignore, or halt the AI's decision or operation. This requires designing user interfaces with clear, timely alerts and straightforward override functions.

Overseer Competence: Ensuring the individuals assigned to oversight roles possess the necessary training, skills, and understanding of the system's purpose and limitations to perform their role competently.

Scope Definition: Clearly delineating the conditions under which the human must be involved (e.g., for all decisions, only for low-confidence outputs, or in exceptional circumstances flagged by the system).

Regulatory Context: Article 14 of the EU AI Act dedicates specific requirements to human oversight for high-risk AI systems. It mandates that oversight measures be built into the system's design, enabling individuals to correctly interpret the AI's output, remain aware of possible automation bias, and intervene or halt the system to prevent harm.

Safeguard Against Harm: Human oversight acts as the final ethical and operational safety net. It mitigates the risks of edge-case failures, model drift, and situations where a technically "correct" output is contextually inappropriate or unjust. By legally mandating this layer of human control, the EU AI Act ensures that accountability for high-risk decisions ultimately rests with people and organizations, not algorithms.

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