Walmart CEO issues wake-up call: ‘AI Is going to change literally every job’

Walmart executives aren’tsugarcoating the message: Artificial intelligence will wipe out some jobs and reshape its workforce.

- Sarah Nassauer & Chip Cutter

Now the country’s largest private employer is making plans to confront that reality.

“It’s very clear that Al 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 Afsslikely 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 Al'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.