According to Walmart, AI Doesn’t Work If People Don’t

For years now, headlines about artificial intelligence have focused on robots taking jobs. Tech companies and analysts have warned that automation will replace millions of workers, erasing livelihoods in its wake.

This week, Walmart offered a different version of the story.

Instead of cutting jobs, the US's largest private employer announced plans to train its entire U.S. and Canadian workforce (about 1.6 million people) on how to use AI tools through a partnership with Google. Frontline store associates and corporate staff alike will get an eight-hour course covering the basics of AI and how it can help with everyday work.

Walmart’s leaders have been clear: they do not expect AI to mean layoffs. “It’s unfortunate when companies use it as a reason to replace workers instead of preparing them for what’s ahead,” said Walmart’s chief people officer Donna Morris. CFO John Furner said the company expects to have “roughly the same number of people we have today.”

The announcement quickly grabbed attention, but the deeper story isn’t about one company being “nice.” It’s about a problem most organizations are quietly discovering: having powerful tools means little if the people who are supposed to use them don’t know how.

AI Isn’t the Problem, Worker Readiness Is

In many workplaces, artificial intelligence tools have been available for some time. Yet recent research suggests that actual use, and usefulness, vary widely.

A major survey of enterprise AI released last year found that nearly all companies have invested in AI, but only a tiny share consider themselves mature in putting it to work. Even when tools are in place, few companies have integrated them deeply into daily routines.

Other data show that most employees are using AI casually, but few have formal training. A Clutch survey found that while about three out of four full-time workers use AI at work, fewer than one in three has received structured guidance on how to do it well. That leaves many employees improvising or unsure about whether they are using the tools responsibly or effectively.

Another recent HR survey reported that a large majority of workers would prefer training in AI skills over broad guarantees about job security, a sign that employees want to understand the tools shaping their work, not just be told they won’t be laid off.

Some enterprise research even suggests that headcount changes linked to AI haven’t materialized yet for most companies. A study of several thousand firms across multiple countries found that the majority have seen no measurable impact on productivity or jobs in the last few years, even as they increase their use of AI tools.

Taken together, these findings point to a simple reality: companies are investing in AI faster than their people are prepared to use it. Tools alone are not enough; how people integrate them into regular work matters more.

In that sense, Walmart’s training push is not just a response to public concern, it could be a response to a real business problem many companies quietly face.

Retail Works Differently, and That Matters

The way Walmart is approaching AI makes sense once you think about what its workforce actually does.

This is not a tech company where much of the work happens on screens or in code. Walmart employees operate in physical stores, on loading docks, behind registers, and in customer service roles that involve human interaction. In these settings, purely replacing workers with software or machines isn’t practical.

Instead, AI is most useful when people use it as an assistant, not a replacement. A separate enterprise report from OpenAI found that many workers who use AI tools report saving time or improving the quality of their work, with some employees saying they save up to an hour a day.

This insight helps explain Walmart’s approach: the company isn’t promising robots will do the work of people. It is betting that teaching people to use AI will make each worker more effective, from scheduling shifts to managing stock levels to handling customer inquiries.

Training at the scale Walmart plans is not trivial. If every one of those 1.6 million workers completes eight hours of instruction, that amounts to more than 12 million hours of training, a massive investment in human capital that few companies have attempted.

There is precedent for this kind of investment. Some companies in other industries have tied employees’ use of AI tools to performance metrics or even promotions. Others have used training as part of broader efforts to get workers engaged with new technology. What’s different about Walmart is the scale and uniformity of the effort across an entire workforce that includes both corporate staff and frontline workers.

Not All Companies Are Taking the Same Path

It’s worth noting that Walmart’s approach is not universal.

In some firms, leaders are tying AI use to career outcomes or even laying off staff as part of restructuring, citing automation as a cost-cutting tool. In other cases, companies are still struggling to move beyond pilots and isolated use cases toward organization-wide impact.

Even among organizations that adopt AI tools, research shows a common pattern: the biggest gains happen when workflows are redesigned, not when tools are simply dropped into old routines. This means that training without changes in expectations and measurements may fall short.

Walmart’s training initiative pushes the spotlight onto a core issue that often gets overshadowed by headlines about automation and job loss: AI’s real value depends on how it is used day-to-day by ordinary workers.

If Walmart’s program helps employees understand the tools and use them in their work, it could set an example for other labor-intensive industries where people are still the backbone of operations.

If the training doesn’t change routines or improve outcomes, it may become another high-profile announcement that doesn’t move the needle.