Quoting Jon Udell
Simon Willison · Simon Willison · 2026-06-28
Jon Udell, quoted by Simon Willison, argues that the phrase 'human in the loop' wrongly cedes narrative authority to AI systems and proposes reframing agentic software development as human-led workflows that invite agents to participate.
Extraction
Topics: agentic-aihuman-ai-collaborationsoftware-developmentai-framing
Claims
- The phrase 'human in the loop' incorrectly positions AI as the primary actor and humans as a secondary oversight mechanism, ceding authority to machines.
- Agentic software development should be framed as human-led workflows that recruit agents rather than as AI-driven loops that insert humans for control.
- Agent-assisted processes need not be opaque black boxes that accept prompts and emit features.
- Agents creating unreviewable pull requests represents a concrete failure mode of current agentic development practices.
Key quotes
I dislike the phrase 'human in the loop' because it cedes authority to the machines. Let's flip the narrative. It's our loop, we work the same way we always have, now we recruit agents to join the team.
An agent-assisted process need not be a black box that takes in prompts and emits features.
Let's do agentic software development like that. Not as a loop we've been excluded from, instead as one we invite agents into.