The stark comments from the CEO of Walmart about artificial intelligence have business leaders talking, CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Tuesday. “I think we’re at a different inflection point,” Cramer said on “Squawk on the Street.” “I had more people talk about these Doug McMillon comments from Walmart than anything else. That this was seminal. That Doug McMillon, who has terrific tech, who is in a battle with Amazon, is basically saying, ‘Listen, we’re not hiring more, and we’re going to get people to do new things.'” McMillon’s remarks surfaced in a Wall Street Journal story over the weekend . “It’s very clear that AI is going to change literally every job,” McMillon said at a conference hosted at the company’s Arkansas headquarters last week, The Journal reported. “Maybe there’s a job in the world that AI won’t change, but I haven’t thought of it,” McMillon said, according to the report. As Walmart embraces AI, the company plans to keep the size of its global workforce about the same — at roughly 2.1 million — over the next three years, despite projecting revenue increases during that timeframe, The Journal reported, citing Walmart’s chief people officer, Donna Morris. McMillon is not the first prominent chief executive to send a warning shot on AI, which has captivated Wall Street and corporate America following the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022. In a June letter posted on Amazon ‘s website, CEO Andy Jassy said that he expects AI to reduce the size of the company’s corporate workforce in the coming years. Still, Walmart’s strategy is causing a stir in Cramer’s corner of the business community. “I’ve spoken with a bunch of retailers in the last 24 hours. … Everyone is surprised,” Cramer said. “Doug McMillon, it’s existential what he said.” Not just for business leaders, Cramer argued, but also for policymakers at the Federal Reserve who are responsible for fostering full employment in the U.S. economy. “[Fed officials] better start thinking about AI more. They’re left out,” Cramer said. The threat of AI disrupting the labor market comes at a time when the Fed is worried about a slowdown in hiring. At the central bank’s post-meeting press conference in mid-September, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell was asked whether he bought into the idea that AI adoption was already having an effect. ‘There’s great uncertainty around that,” Powell said. “I think my view — which is also a bit of a guess, but widely shared I think — is that you are seeing some effects, but it’s not the main thing driving it. … It may be that companies or other institutions that have been hiring younger people right out of college are able to use AI more than they had in the past. That may be part of the story. It’s also part of the story, though, that, you know, job creation more broadly has slowed down. The economy has slowed down. And so it’s probably a number of things.” Disclosure: Cramer’s Charitable Trust, the portfolio used by the CNBC Investing Club, owns shares of Amazon.
