Pith Number

pith:DWTRV74D

pith:2026:DWTRV74DU6FS5L52TBV3HB4RBY

not attested not anchored not stored refs resolved

Humanwashing -- It Should Leave You Feeling Dirty

Ben Wilson, Matimba Swana, Matt Roach, Peter Winter

The 'human in the loop' metaphor in AI discussions often obscures real oversight needs and enables misleading safety claims.

arxiv:2605.13723 v1 · 2026-05-13 · cs.HC · cs.AI · cs.LG · cs.SI

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2 Internet Archive

3 Author claim open · sign in to claim

4 Citations open

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The bundle contains the canonical record plus signed events. A mirror can host it anywhere and recompute the same current state with the deterministic merge algorithm.

Claims

C1strongest claim

Indiscriminate use of the loop metaphor obscures both processes and outcomes. It enables 'humanwashing', an activity analogous to 'greenwashing'.

C2weakest assumption

That the metaphor is being used in contexts where it does not assist understanding and primarily serves to put systems in the best light.

C3one line summary

The 'human in the loop' metaphor in AI systems enables 'humanwashing' by obscuring actual oversight processes and outcomes.

References

39 extracted · 39 resolved · 0 Pith anchors

[1] The Flaws of Policies Requiring Human Oversight of Government Algorithms 2022

[2] Rethinking ‘Meaningful Human Control’ 2024

[3] Is Human Oversight to AI Systems Still Possible? New Biotechnology 2025

[4] A Pro-Innovation Approach to AI Regulation 2023

[5] Information Commissioner’s Office. na, editor. How Do We Ensure Individual Rights in Our AI Systems?. ICO; 2025. https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/uk-gdpr-guidance-and- resources/artificial-intelli 2025

Receipt and verification

First computed	2026-05-18T02:44:16.637086Z
Builder	pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1
Signature	Pith Ed25519 (`pith-v1-2026-05`) · public key
Schema	pith-number/v1.0

Canonical hash

1da71aff83a78b2eafba986bb387910e35cdb73f91add2386efe64a96b98f630

Aliases

arxiv: 2605.13723 · arxiv_version: 2605.13723v1 · doi: 10.48550/arxiv.2605.13723 · pith_short_12: DWTRV74DU6FS · pith_short_16: DWTRV74DU6FS5L52 · pith_short_8: DWTRV74D

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Verify this Pith Number yourself

curl -sH 'Accept: application/ld+json' https://pith.science/pith/DWTRV74DU6FS5L52TBV3HB4RBY \
  | jq -c '.canonical_record' \
  | python3 -c "import sys,json,hashlib; b=json.dumps(json.loads(sys.stdin.read()), sort_keys=True, separators=(',',':'), ensure_ascii=False).encode(); print(hashlib.sha256(b).hexdigest())"
# expect: 1da71aff83a78b2eafba986bb387910e35cdb73f91add2386efe64a96b98f630

Canonical record JSON

{
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    "abstract_canon_sha256": "d25a6fe5099bc2a9f26fc977062161966d9b0a3822835280ae916b1846821b9e",
    "cross_cats_sorted": [
      "cs.AI",
      "cs.LG",
      "cs.SI"
    ],
    "license": "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
    "primary_cat": "cs.HC",
    "submitted_at": "2026-05-13T16:05:43Z",
    "title_canon_sha256": "363a9f60dcf8ab7c95795bb7043a6b2c9a1d52f5efe025dea3300cdc3cf580d9"
  },
  "schema_version": "1.0",
  "source": {
    "id": "2605.13723",
    "kind": "arxiv",
    "version": 1
  }
}