AI, on one page.

What it is, where it bites, what it costs, who signs, and where it sits in retail.

1
Ask what goes in and what comes out. If nobody can say, there is no project yet.
2
Most of the value is in simple models you can explain in a sentence.
3
The only score that counts is on data the model never saw. Ask for it.
4
Fluent is not the same as true. Keep a person wherever the answer must be exact.
5
Know what a false alarm costs and what a miss costs. The threshold is your decision, not the vendor’s.
6
Autonomy is earned from the logs, one notch at a time. Start with a person on nearly everything.

Where it sits in retail

Step	What the AI does	Lands in	Ask
Price Where it bites	Sets prices automatically from demand and competitors.	Prices on the site and the shelf	How did it do on weeks it was not built from?
Stock A simple model	Forecasts what each store will sell and orders to match.	Replenishment orders	What goes in, and who can override it?
Sell The price of wrong	Screens payments for fraud at checkout.	Approve or decline at checkout	What does a turned-away customer cost against a chargeback?
Serve The assistant	Answers order and delivery questions in chat from the order system.	Chat replies to customers	Does it read the order system, and does it hand over to a person?
Return Who signs	Approves small returns from customers with a clean history; the rest go to a person.	Returns approvals	Up to what value does it approve alone?

The three questions that settle any AI pitch

1
What goes in, and what comes out?
No clear answer, no project. Yet.
2
How did it score on data it had never seen, and on how many rows?
The demo score is the student marking their own exam.
3
What does a wrong answer cost, and who signs the ones it gets to make alone?
The threshold and the autonomy are your decisions, not the vendor’s.

Illustrative examples, not client results. Nydros · nydros.com/learn/brief?industry=retail