Why Logistics AI Still Needs “Experts in the Loop”

As AI tools multiply across freight and logistics, the important question is how much control to hand over, and to what. On the latest Lean Quarterly Dive, host Malcolm Harris sat down with Lean Solutions Group CTO Alfonso Quijano to unpack that question. “experts in the loop,” a model that treats human judgment

Quijano didn’t waste time getting to the thesis. “Experts in the loop,” according to Quijano, is a model that treats human judgment not as a stopgap for AI’s limitations, but as the thing that makes AI worth using in the first place.

“Experts in the loop is the natural evolution of the logistics roles inside of every operation for every broker and every logistics player,” Quijano said. AI has unlocked real productivity gains across the industry, he said, but its full value only shows up once it’s paired with human judgment.

“You don’t really leverage its full capabilities until you pair it up with the right judgment and the right capabilities that come from a human expert,” Quijano explained, adding that Lean isn’t interested in building a world where AI makes decisions unsupervised. Instead, the model splits the work. AI handles the repetitive grunt work, while humans stay in the loop feeding it judgment so it keeps improving and can be trusted with the harder calls.

This story was originally published by FreightWaves. Read the full story at FreightWaves →