Walmart has announced it will provide free AI training to its entire 1.6 million-person workforce in the United States and Canada, marking a stark contrast to Silicon Valley companies using AI adoption as justification for layoffs.
Fortune reports that the retail giant has partnered with Google to offer an eight-hour course covering AI fundamentals as part of Google’s new AI Professional Certification program. The training will be available to both frontline retail workers and corporate staff, covering core AI concepts as well as specialized applications in research, app building, and communication.
Donna Morris, Walmart’s chief people officer, criticized the trend of companies using artificial intelligence as a reason to reduce headcount. “We as big employers should be actively engaged in trying to equip our respective employees—in our case associates—to be prepared for a world that is AI enabled and automated or digitized,” Morris told Fortune in an exclusive interview. She called it “unfortunate” when companies use AI to replace workers instead of training them for what’s ahead.
The initiative comes as new research from Google and Ipsos reveals a significant skills gap in the American workforce. According to the study, only 40 percent of U.S. workers report using AI in their jobs, and just five percent qualify as “AI fluent” — meaning they have meaningfully redesigned or reorganized substantial portions of their work around AI innovations. Workers who achieve AI fluency were found to be 4.5 times more likely to receive higher wages.
Morris characterized this gap as representing both a risk and a responsibility for large employers. For Walmart, the training program serves multiple strategic purposes beyond simple productivity gains. The company views it as a retention tool and a pathway for workers to advance into higher-paying positions within the organization.
Workers who develop AI skills may be better positioned to move into store leadership roles, with top-performing regional managers earning between $420,000 and $620,000, or to transition into corporate positions. “We want to make sure that we equip all of our associates with the best tools to allow them to be successful as Walmart continues to reshape as a people-led, tech-powered company,” Morris said. “But equally so that each of our associates has the ability to navigate their own careers.”
Corporate leaders at Walmart have been transparent about the transformative impact AI will have on the company’s operations. Breitbart News previously reported that former CEO Doug McMillon, who transitioned out of the role earlier this month, stated last September that “it’s very clear that AI is going to change literally every job.”
However, the company’s newly appointed leader, John Furner, has indicated that Walmart does not anticipate AI triggering widespread workforce reductions. “When we look out two years, three years, five years, where I think we’ll be is we’ll have roughly the same number of people we have today,” Furner said in September when he was leading Walmart’s U.S. operations.
Rather than eliminating positions, Furner suggested that artificial intelligence will reshape existing roles and potentially increase their value to both workers and the company. “We’re extending people’s careers, and those jobs pay better,” Furner said. “The attrition rates are really low.”
Morris emphasized that while change is inevitable in the AI era, human workers will remain central to Walmart’s operations. “We all have to change. That’s an ongoing need, but we all have the opportunity to lean into what that new future is,” Morris said.
She expressed optimism about the future of work in an AI-enabled environment, predicting the creation of new jobs and businesses rather than widespread displacement. “I think new jobs will be created. I think new businesses will be created. I think the way we will do things will change. But that’s not to say that humans are going to be left behind,” Morris said.
The impact of AI on the economy, and how leftists hope to exploit both the technology and fear of its impact to influence upcoming elections, are key topics in the upcoming book by Breitbart News Social Media Director Wynton Hall, Code Red: The Left, the Right, China, and the Race to Control AI:
In Code Red, Breitbart social media director Wynton Hall exposes where that power hides, how it operates, how conservatives can navigate the AI political battlescape, avert its landmines, and turn peril into promise. AI decides what you see and what gets censored. It’s quietly rewiring our whole way of life. Jobs. Schools. Family. Church. Even national security. All of it will shock-test our civic order.
Inside Code Red, you will discover:
- Why AI is wired for woke indoctrination—and how to resist it.
- How elites plan to weaponize AI job losses to push dependency.
- How America can beat China without becoming China.
- How to prepare your kids for the blinding speed of AI disruption.
- The new national security threats AI unleashes—and how we defend against them.
- Why “AI girlfriends” are luring millions—and what it will take to preserve authentic human connection.
- How AI will test faith and meaning—and why spiritual renewal may be its most surprising outcome.
Urgent, deeply researched, and written with page-turner elegance, Code Red is the conservative battle plan for the AI era. Either we wake up and fight back, or we lose everything that made America free.
Read more at Fortune here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
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