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Human-in-the-loop: The secret weapon for superior customer experiences.

Human-in-the-loop systems are a type of AI that uses human judgment to improve training and decision-making. Unlike fully autonomous or pretrained AI, human-in-the-loop systems leverage human expertise to guide and refine the AI’s performance, language, and knowledge. In this blog post, Torben Seebach outlines key concepts, offers guidance on where to begin, highlights potential risks, and explains the value that can be anticipated.

Torben Seebach | februari 10, 2025 | 10 min.
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AI is only as good as the data it learns from. But what can a business do to utilize the value of their existing data and make systems that can be a competitive advantage? The answer lies in leveraging human-in-the-loop systems. These systems are changing the game, allowing humans to guide AI’s learning, refine its understanding, and ensure it develops a more accurate and ethical view that aligns with the business’s goals and values.

Key Findings:

  • Human-in-the-loop systems combine the power of AI with human expertise, leading to more accurate and reliable results.
  • Human-in-the-loop systems improve the relevance of AI-generated content by incorporating domain-specific knowledge and human feedback.
  • This approach unlocks valuable training data, creating a continuous cycle of learning and optimization for AI models.
  • Human-in-the-loop systems offer a cost-effective and high-performing way to leverage Generative AI (GenAI), as it allows businesses to fine-tune existing models rather than building them from scratch or using premium models with complex and sometimes unpredictable logic.
  • By prioritizing human-in-the-loop systems, businesses can gain a competitive edge through personalized and engaging customer experiences.
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Human oversight

Imagine you are a business owner trying to keep up with the latest tech trends. You have heard the buzz around GenAI and its potential to revolutionize customer interactions. But you are also wary of the pitfalls: inaccurate information, generic responses, and the risk of alienating customers with robotic interactions and cost. Or maybe you are a business that is struggling to provide personalized customer experiences at scale, leading to customer churn and missed opportunities? Either way, you are not alone. Many businesses are grappling with these challenges as they explore the use of GenAI. This is where human-in-the-loop systems come in, offering a powerful solution that bridges the gap between GenAI’s potential and the need for human oversight.

The rise of GenAI has opened incredible opportunities for businesses to transform their customer experience. However, to fully harness the potential of these technologies, integrating human-in-the-loop AI is essential. This approach combines the strengths of human expertise and machine learning, ensuring that AI systems are not only accurate but also aligned with human values and expectations.

Why should your business prioritize human-in-the-loop systems?

  • Improved accuracy: GenAI is powerful, but it is not perfect. Human feedback helps correct errors and biases in GenAI – generated content, ensuring that your outputs are reliable and accurate. This builds trust with your customers in your language.
  • Enhanced relevance: By fine-tuning your GenAI models with domain-specific data and human expertise, you can ensure that the GenAI understands your industry’s unique terminology and context. This leads to more relevant and tailored customer interactions.
  • Unlocking a goldmine of training data: The data generated through human-in-the-loop systems is incredibly valuable. It can be used to continuously train and improve your GenAI models, creating a virtuous cycle of learning and optimization.
  • Reduced costs: Fine-tuning allows you to leverage existing GenAI models, eliminating the need for expensive training from scratch. This makes GenAI technology more cost-effective.
  • Competitive advantage: Fine-tuned GenAI models with domain expertise provide a competitive edge by delivering personalized and relevant customer experiences.
  • Data accuracy: Accurate data is the foundation of any successful GenAI system. Human oversight ensures that your GenAI is learning from reliable and trustworthy data, leading to outputs that build customer trust and aligned with the language of your business.
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How human-in-the-loop works

The process of human-in-the-loop AI involves several key steps to ensure the AI system is both accurate and relevant.

  1. Collect data: Before fine-tuning, data needs to be collected either from an existing system or created synthetically. This data forms the foundation upon which the GenAI model will be built.
  2. Initial training: The GenAI model is initially trained on a massive dataset of text and code. This step allows the GenAI to learn from a broad range of information, establishing a baseline of knowledge.
  3. Human evaluation: Domain experts then review the GenAI’s output, identifying areas that require improvement. Their expertise is crucial in pinpointing inaccuracies and biases that the GenAI might have missed.
  4. Feedback and correction: Humans provide specific feedback to the GenAI, correcting errors and suggesting improvements. This step ensures that the GenAI’s learning process is guided by human insight and expertise.
  5. Model fine-tuning: Using the feedback provided by humans, the GenAI model is fine-tuned. This step adjusts the AI’s parameters to better align with the desired outcomes and improves its performance.
  6. Iteration: This process is repeated iteratively to achieve optimal performance. Each cycle of evaluation, feedback, and fine-tuning helps the AI model become more accurate and reliable.

By following these steps, human-in-the-loop AI systems can continuously improve, leveraging the strengths of both human intelligence and machine learning to deliver superior results.

Drawbacks and added risk

Compared to off the shelf GenAI models such as the GPT series from OpenAI – the obvious challenge is that the fine-tuned model needs to be validated and checked for errors that are derived from data quality issues. Here is a list of some of the common types of risks:

Resource Requirements: Depending on your ambitions, it can take a long time. The higher quality required, the larger the volume of data to be produced or checked it types more resources and time. It’s very important to think about how to fit this into your existing processes and to think about how your business continuously improves the data.

Overfitting to the Fine-tuning Dataset: The model may perform exceptionally well on the fine-tuning data but poorly on unseen, real-world data that slightly differs. This is because it memorizes the training examples rather than generalizing the underlying principles.

Forgetfulness: The model ”forgets” knowledge acquired during pre-training when fine-tuned on a narrow dataset or for a specific task.

Bias Amplification: Biases present in the fine-tuning dataset can be amplified, leading to discriminatory or unfair outputs.

Privacy Leakage: If the fine-tuning dataset contains sensitive information, the model may inadvertently memorize and leak it through its outputs.

Difficulty of Control: It can be challenging to precisely control the behavior of a fine-tuned model and ensure it aligns with specific requirements or constraints. Thus, it’s better suited for narrow use cases rather than general use.

Conclusion

Human-in-the-loop AI offers a powerful way for businesses to harness the potential of GenAI while mitigating its risks. By combining the efficiency of AI with the nuanced judgment of humans, companies can create customer experiences that are both personalized and trustworthy. As AI continues to evolve, the role of human oversight will only become more critical. Ultimately, the ongoing evolution of technology will continue to reshape the business world, and staying informed is crucial for success. Will businesses that embrace Human-in-the-loop systems be the ones that thrive in the age of intelligent automation?

I hope you will dive deeper into the world of GenAI with human-in-the-loop systems. Explore how it can be implemented in your specific industry, discuss the implications with your team, and consider the potential benefits for your customers. The future of customer experience is here, and it is a collaborative effort between humans and machines.