Walmart is reportedly laying off more than 100 employees in its technology offices in Silicon Valley, part of larger corporate layoffs across the country.
The company’s tech workers in the San Francisco Bay Area are being axed as part of Walmart’s plan to lay off around 1,500 corporate employees across the country, according to a report by the San Francisco Chronicle.
Positions within Walmart’s global technology, U.S. e-commerce fulfillment, and advertising divisions will reportedly also be hit as a result of the company being restructured. The company, however, did not disclose all of the locations that will be affected.
“To accelerate our progress delivering the experiences that will define the future of retail, we must sharpen our focus,” Walmart told certain groups of employees in an internal memo obtained by multiple media outlets a few weeks ago.
A WARN (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification) notice filed with the state’s Employment Development Department revealed the job cuts include 106 positions at Walmart’s Global Tech office in San Bruno, California.
Those technology jobs are set to be permanently terminated by August 22.
“Reshaping our structure allows us to accelerate how we deliver and adapt to the changing environment around us,” Walmart’s internal memo added.
While the details surrounding exactly why Walmart is axing these jobs have yet to be made clear, the company’s decision to cut more than 100 positions in its technology offices is curious.
As Breitbart News reported, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who leads one of the world’s most powerful AI companies, warns that AI could end up causing a mass elimination of jobs in technology, finance, law, and consulting, among other professions, as well as wipe out half of all entry-level white collar jobs.
“We, as the producers of this technology, have a duty and an obligation to be honest about what is coming,” Amodei told Axios. “I don’t think this is on people’s radar.”
Eventually, business leaders will see the savings associated with replacing humans with AI and will implement the changes on a massive scale, Amodei warned, adding that he believes this will occur almost overnight, with the public only realizing the calamity when it’s too late.
“We’ve talked to scores of CEOs at companies of various sizes and across many industries,” Axios reported. “Every single one of them is working furiously to figure out when and how agents or other AI technology can displace human workers at scale.”
“The second these technologies can operate at a human efficacy level, which could be six months to several years from now, companies will shift from humans to machines,” the outlet added.
Walmart, however, insists that despite some of its positions being cut, the company is also creating new roles.
Alana Mastrangelo is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on Facebook and X at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
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