I am not sure if many of the commenters here have experience of shoplifting, whether doing it or working in retail and therefore having to prevent what the indu

I am not sure if many of the commenters here have experience of shoplifting, whether doing it or working in retail and therefore having to prevent what the industry calls 'shrinkage'. Some say that the neural network will be racial profiling instead of working on body language tells. However, having worked in retail and knowing the attitudes of some of my colleagues, I think I would trust a computer over some of my former workmates when it comes to having fair suspicions. The training for the neural network is simple, the known thieving incidents get traced back to the thief entering the door and doing what all thieves do when they enter the store - scope out the counter, the cameras and mirrors. It is all body language. There can be off-duty thieves who don't steal always but will be showing some of the same tells. These will be false positives. But then there are the long tail thieving situations that can not be spotted by a mere human. For example, a woman regularly stealing cat litter and pet food with every weekly shop for a family. She simply placed the items on the lower part of the shopping trolley, checked everything else out properly and conveniently forgot to pay for the 'minor items' on the lower rung. No human would have thought a normal member of society would risk reputation for the small financial gain involved. This probably started as an accidental theft one week with no 'nerves' involved. By the following week the 'OMG silly me!' routine would have been prepared for. There would be no looking at the security arrangements walking in, so very different 'tells'. Humans could not spot this, but a neural network trained on every bit of shrinkage across a vast store network might stand half a chance. If you do work in retail you actually want to deliver excellent customer service and to trust customers. So, from a point of view of wanting to do that and give customers undivided attention, I welcome our new neural network overlords.