Walmart CEO Issues Wake-Up Call: 'AI Is Going to Change Literally Every Job' (msn.com) 41
It's the world's largest companies by revenue. But Walmart's executives have a blunt message, reports the Wall Street Journal: "Artificial intelligence will wipe out jobs and reshape its workforce."
"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... "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... 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...
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.
The article also a comment made by Ford Motor Chief Executive Jim Farley earlier this summer. "Artificial intelligence is going to replace literally half of all white-collar workers in the U.S."
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... 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...
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.
The article also a comment made by Ford Motor Chief Executive Jim Farley earlier this summer. "Artificial intelligence is going to replace literally half of all white-collar workers in the U.S."
where have all the customers gone (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Will it eliminate CEO positions? (Score:5, Funny)
Also one of the easiest to replace with a machine that hallucinates.
Re: (Score:3)
CEOs are almost always the highest compensated in the company but at a large company like Walmart I guarantee you that the combined cost of all the employees far exceeds that of the employees. Not having a CEO (or not paying him, whatever) wouldn't really change the financial situation of a company.
Now a company where it might actually be the case that the CEO makes way more than all the employees put together is Elon Musk and Tesla's extremely ridiculous compensation package for him. His pay package is act
Re: where have all the customers gone (Score:2, Offtopic)
Where did all the grammar go? Why does it say "it's the largest companies" when obviously they meant company.
Re: (Score:2)
AI helpers do not understand language, but instead perform statistical word completion (in the literature, this is called "generative modelling").
The idea goes back at least to Claude Shannon's papers on communication theory from the 1950s. This page has a link to his 1948 paper. [wikipedia.org] A particularly illuminating example is on p.7, Section 3.
Your example exhibits short term trigram learning. The comp
Re: (Score:2)
The idea goes back at least to Claude Shannon's papers on communication theory from the 1950s. This page has a link to his 1948 paper. [wikipedia.org] A particularly illuminating example is on p.7, Section 3.
Cool find
There won't be headlines (Score:1)
What they're trying to do is create a new economic system apart from capitalism where they can control goods and services entirely without needing consumers.
That's why AI is so desirable to them. It lets wealth access skill without skill accessing wealth.
Basically a new
Re: (Score:2)
This is an interesting take, can you explain this to me in more detail:
"What they're trying to do is create a new economic system apart from capitalism where they can control goods and services entirely without needing consumers.
That's why AI is so desirable to them. It lets wealth access skill without skill accessing wealth."
Re: (Score:2)
There's a book that might be interesting
Technofeudalism by Yanis Varoufakis [penguin.co.uk].
He has made one of the most clear statements of the idea of the destruction of capitalism by the new tech barons. In his statement it's about a change from purchases to rent seeking which gives the owners of particular tech dominions much greater power over transactions than they would have in a normal capitalist exchange.
Re: (Score:2)
1) Built chatbots.
2) Automated some warehouse tasks (and pretended that was AI)
3) Hired people to improve the chatbots because they don't work well (a position they call "agent builder")
The other things they mention are just future guesses (they talk about it a lot at executive meetings). They also mention revenue is going up (why not advertise your company
Re: (Score:1)
If this is the case, with effectively all workers effected negatively through job loss or job deterioration, then almost all of humanity will reject AI powered organizations and services.
A list of jobs that will not be affected by it: (Score:3)
AI will not change cooks. I have seen AI recipes, not helpful.
Which brings us to:
Waiters, Janitors, Masons, Electricians, Carpenters, Sommeliers, Wielders, Cashiers, and Farmers.
Re:A list of jobs that will not be affected by it: (Score:4, Interesting)
"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... "Maybe there's a job in the world that AI won't change, but I haven't thought of it."
How about Walmart Greeter?
More seriously... while his statement might sound profound at first, it's merely stating the obvious. Technology and the Internet have already been dramatically changing "literally every job" for the past half century.
Re: (Score:2)
How about Walmart Greeter?
When the shoppers are all AI bots, I'm sure they'll prefer being greeted by their own kind.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: A list of jobs that will not be affected by it (Score:2)
Walmart customer host (Score:2)
Over time, the Walmart greeter's responsibilities expanded to what is now the "customer host" position. Because some of these new responsibilities were somewhat physical, some associates with disabilities were moved to self checkout host or other front-end positions.
Delusional execs (Score:5, Insightful)
i haven't seen this level of global delusion in my entire life. the executives of every company are absolutely insane. they're blinded by the promise of a jump in efficiency, but dont know enough about the underlying technology to really understand how it can be applied, so they're all just blindly walking off a cliff.
this is insane to see and very illuminating about how stupid all of these PHB's are.
Re: (Score:2)
"LLMs" are a red herring. Physics will always win.
Re: (Score:2)
Yep, the money spent, the electricity consumed and shear amount of unreliable behaviour should be telling them to stop the insanity.
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Its like they all got out of the same hypnotoad timeshare presentation
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Alternatively, they see an opportunity to fire people and renegotiate contracts with lower payment. There have already been several instances of people being fired because they were being made redundant by AI and then it turned out H1B visas were used to hire much cheaper replacements. Given that was done immediately, the bosses knew exactly what they were doing from the start.
Re: (Score:2)
Lemmings.
self check out really went bad for them (Score:2)
self check out really went bad for them
Re: (Score:2)
No, that was because of malicious customers.
So that +400 million bonus was absolutely justified.
Observation (Score:2)
This person runs a shop not an AI company, I am not sure he understands tech that well.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not sure he understands his own shop that well. But I'll bet it understands him.
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Managers in general don't understand the situation (Score:2)
That is my personal observation
"Everyone else will be affected but me" (Score:3)
Consequences for thee, but not for me.
What about the Hallucination Problem? (Score:2)
When you or I use one of the AI chatboxes we see errors a significant fraction of the time. And of course this is only a small fraction of the errors because of our lack of previous knowledge.
I just don't understand why business is going to use AI so heavily with all these errors.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not hallucinations (those only happen for biological organisms). These are errors in pattern prediction -- malfunctions. The malfunction rate in these things is astounding. Imagine a surgeon who gets more business every time he kills a patient because he saw "he" and assumed he was supposed to operate on the head instead of the heart. That's where LLM's are.
With ICE... (Score:2)
With ICE arresting, detaining, and deporting below minimum-wage workers Walmart hires through contractors, yeah they will need AI. With drones floating around following us...like in Futurama:
https://youtu.be/Jass7lf8oxQ?t... [youtu.be] (the new loss prevention...)
What will be funny is when the AI replaces the ROI cost-effective focused human CEO with a more efficient program, that doesn't get performance bonuses, works 24x7.
Think of the "BOSS" from Doctor Who "The Green Death"...or any other thriller-horror sci-fi B
Made me appreciate people more, at least (Score:2)
1. I am now BEGGING to get into chats with actual humans because the AI agents suck SO HARD
2. I interviewed with a company and asked about their AI policy and the policy is: we don't use it for any of our code. The guy said that if it were up to him, he MIGHT allow it a bit, but only at the senior level and above. Otherwise, you have to do your time and learn your lessons. I respect this.
3. I'm surprised at how well people actually DO recognize AI slop and resent it.
So yeah, it's changed my opinion about jo
I guess that's the greatest expert on that matter (Score:2)
Including yours (Score:2)
See above,