Why Sam’s Club employees are no longer afraid that AI will replace jobs

• Sam’s Club uses a system of floor-cleaning robots equipped with AI inventory scanners.
• These devices take over the work that previously required an employee to walk down each aisle to check inventory.
• One employee tells BI that automation has made his job more enjoyable and alleviated his concerns about AI.

When it comes to the impact of AI and automation on the workplace, there is still no consensus.

A 2022 global study by Accenture found that more than 40% of warehouse workers expressed a “negative attitude” toward automation that could potentially lead to their replacement.

“I was generally afraid of losing my job to robots,” a forklift driver at Sam’s Club told Business Insider. “But after seeing how the company is handling this, I don’t think I’ll lose my job anytime soon.”

The employee, who wished to remain anonymous because he is not authorized to speak to the media, said his attitude changed after the Walmart-owned hypermarket introduced a new fleet of floor-cleaning robots at U.S. locations starting in 2022.

Not only do these robots clean the warehouse floors on their own, but according to Chris Nicholas, CEO of Sam’s Club, they are also equipped with AI-powered cameras that “perform 23 million scans of all inventory throughout our clubs every day, including what’s on the floor.”

The forklift operator explained to BI that before these machines arrived, part of his job was to walk down each aisle of the warehouse at the end of each shift and make note of which items he needed to prioritize when he clocked in at 4 a.m. the next morning.

Thanks to computer vision and artificial intelligence, the floor cleaning robots now create this list automatically, leaving them more time for the more enjoyable aspects of their work.

And the more he sees what these automated systems can do, the better he understands what they cannot do.

“They’re going to need me to work on the cargo anyway,” he said, referring to unloading pallets of goods from trucks. “They need a human – a robot can’t work on the cargo.”

The CEO of Sam’s Club also said in a recent interview with Jefferies that he wants to use these tools to give employees more time to serve customers.

“It’s a very human thing,” Nicholas said. “By doing less of the things they don’t want to do, they can spend time with the people we should be spending time with.”