‘No sugarcoating things’ says CEO Doug McMillon.

No Sugarcoating from Walmart CEO Doug McMillon

The Wall Street Journal reports Walmart CEO Issues Wake-Up Call.

“It’s very clear that AI is going to change literally every job,” Chief Executive Doug McMillon said this week in one of the most pointed assessments to date from a big-company CEO on AI’s likely impact on employment.

His remarks reflect a rapid shift from just months ago in how business leaders discuss the potential human cost of the technology. Companies including Ford, JPMorgan Chase and Amazon have bluntly predicted job losses associated with AI. Some have advised other employers to prepare their workforces for change.

Some jobs and tasks at the retail juggernaut will be eliminated, while others will be created, McMillon said this week at Walmart’s Bentonville headquarters during a workforce conference with executives from other companies. “Maybe there’s a job in the world that AI won’t change, but I haven’t thought of it.”

For now, Walmart executives say the transformation means the size of its global workforce will stay roughly flat even as its revenue climbs. It plans to maintain its head count of around 2.1 million global workers over the next three years, but the mix of those jobs will change significantly, said Donna Morris, Walmart’s chief people officer. What the composition will look like remains murky.

“We’ve got to do our homework, and so we don’t have those answers,” Morris said.

Already Walmart has built chat bots, which it calls “agents,” for customers, suppliers and workers. It is also tracking an expanding share of its supply chain and product trends with AI. In July, Walmart hired an executive from Instacart, Daniel Danker, to oversee those ambitions. Danker reports to McMillon. Part of his role includes working with Morris to determine how Walmart’s workforce should shift.

‘Agent builders’ vs. humanoid robots

Some changes are already rippling across the workforce. In recent years Walmart has automated many of its warehouses with the help of AI-related technology, triggering some job cuts, executives said. Walmart is also looking to automate some back-of-store tasks.

The drumbeat of warnings about AI-related job cuts has increased in recent months. Accenture CEO Julie Sweet told investors Thursday that the firm is “exiting” employees who can’t be retrained for the AI age. Meanwhile, it will continue to hire people who are generative AI-fluent and retrain existing workers to serve clients in consulting and other divisions. “Artificial intelligence is going to replace literally half of all white-collar workers in the U.S.,” Ford Motor Chief Executive Jim Farley said this summer.

‘Embrace the moment’

Omri Yoffe, CEO of Vi, a roughly 115-person AI company that focuses on healthcare, recently told employees they need to think of the current moment in almost Darwinian terms. Those who fail to evolve, learn new skills and create higher-value roles for themselves might be left behind.

“I’m telling them, ‘Guys, you are going to stay here, but you need to be the change agent. You need to evolve yourself,’ ” Yoffe said. “You’re smart enough to work here, but you’re not going to do the same job in two years. Embrace the moment.”

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