Walmart CEO Doug McMillon warned that AI will “change literally every job” as the retail giant looks to automate more roles and keep the size of its workforce flat over the next few years.
Artificial intelligence will erase some jobs and tasks at the country’s largest private employer, while also creating a few new ones, McMillon said this week during a conference with executives from other companies at Walmart’s Bentonville, Ark. headquarters.
“Maybe there’s a job in the world that AI won’t change, but I haven’t thought of it,” he said, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
Executives from companies like Ford, JPMorgan Chase and Amazon have already issued ominous warnings about AI’s potential to slam the workforce.
That impact has been a top concern for Walmart executives, who have been discussing the potential role of AI during nearly every high-level meeting, according to the Journal.
The company has been tracking which job types decrease, increase and stay steady in order to gauge where additional training can help prepare workers for AI’s onslaught, the report said.
“Our goal is to create the opportunity for everybody to make it to the other side,” McMillon said.
Walmart’s global workforce of roughly 2.1 million workers is expected to remain flat over the next three years, even as revenue rises – but the mix of jobs will change significantly, Donna Morris, Walmart’s chief people officer, told the outlet.
As for what that new mix will look like, Morris said: “We’ve got to do our homework, and so we don’t have those answers.”
Walmart has already built AI chatbots – called “agents” – that can aid customers, suppliers and workers with questions.
But not every AI advancement is a fit for the company.
Several firms have pitched robot workers, for example, to Walmart, McMillon said during the conference.
“Until we’re serving humanoid robots and they have the ability to spend money, we’re serving people,” he said. “We are going to put people in front of people.”
Walmart has started using AI to track parts of its supply chain and gather data on product trends.
In July, the company hired Daniel Danker, an executive at Instacart, to manage these AI ambitions.
A key part of Danker’s job involves working with Morris to decide how Walmart’s workforce should shift over time.
The company has already cut some jobs as it automated many of its warehouses with the use of AI, according to executives.
Now it’s looking to automate some back-of-store tasks, as well.
It also created a new “agent builder” role last month to hire employees that can build the AI agent tools.
Walmart is also planning to hire some more human workers in home delivery and its customer positions, like bakeries, and it has added more in-store maintenance technicians and truck drivers in recent years.
But AI-related changes are on their way, though they will be gradual, McMillon said.
Customer service roles in call centers and online chat rooms, for example, will quickly become more AI-dependent, while it will take longer for other tasks, he added.
