Another CEO with a pretty good perch from which to observe.*
From the Wall Street Journal via MSN, September 27:
Walmart executives aren’t sugarcoating the message: Artificial intelligence will wipe out jobs and reshape its workforce.
Now the country’s largest private employer is making plans to confront that reality.
“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.”Inside Walmart, top executives have started to examine AI’s implications for its workforce in nearly every high-level planning meeting. Company leaders say they are tracking which job types decrease, increase and stay steady to gauge where additional training and preparation can help workers
“Our goal is to create the opportunity for everybody to make it to the other side,” McMillon said.
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.
New roles have been established, too. Walmart, for example, created an “agent builder” position last month—an employee who builds AI tools to help merchants. It expects to add people in areas like home delivery or in high-touch customer positions, such as its bakeries. The company has also added more in-store maintenance technicians and truck drivers in recent years.....
....MUCH MORE
As of the end of FY2024, Walmart employed approximately 2.1 million associates worldwide, with approximately 1.6 million associates in the U.S.—WMTOf course, because they are spread out over a billion square feet of retail space, it's not as crowded as might appear at first glance.
*September 27 - Thrift Stores+: "Goodwill CEO says he’s preparing for an influx of jobless Gen Zers because of AI—and warns, a youth unemployment crisis is already happening"
