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Inside Walmart’s generative AI journey
“Similar to how early users of Microsoft Excel had to be trained to understand how to harness the power of a PivotTable and VLOOKUP formulas, generative AI users have to understand prompting and high-impact use cases to truly harness its power,” he says, also calling attention to change management and adoption, the importance of which is not to be underestimated with regard to AI.
To drive the adoption of My Assistant, Walmart uses formal and informal tactics, conducting demos of pragmatic use cases at town halls to build awareness and then delivering hands-on training to people managers, arming them with the experience, knowledge, and confidence they need to advocate for use cases within their teams.
“We’re encouraging our leaders to talk to their teams about using My Assistant and are highlighting ways to show how it can power creativity and productivity,” explains Peterson. “If an associate needs to write a whitepaper, they shouldn’t be ashamed to use My Assistant as a starting point. Managers should celebrate its use, knowing it can lead to a more creative and productive first draft. The output won’t be perfect and will require human intervention, but My Assistant can dramatically help remove writer’s block to get started.” He says “seeing is believing” and that hands-on training will empower your people and help them see generative AI as a productivity enhancer — an ally, rather than a threat.
Looking forward
Today, My Assistant serves up a consumer-grade experience that enables Walmart corporate employees in the US to securely synthesize, summarize, and augment proprietary data from Walmart’s ecosystem. In the near term, corporate US employees will be able to use My Assistant to answer complex questions related to their benefits, as well as take advantage of other personalized use cases around career development, learning, onboarding, data analysis, and more.
Looking to the future, Walmart intends to expand My Assistant to its international corporate employees, starting with those in Canada, Mexico, and Central America. Its vision is also to eventually empower frontline associates in Walmart stores and Sam’s Clubs with gen AI solutions, to enable them to better serve customers and members.
As with any new technology, it’s hard to imagine just how much GenAI will shape our work and everyday life. What’s clear is that Peterson expects that many jobs will be augmented and, as a byproduct, many new ones created.
“But at the end of the day,” he says, “our people will continue to be what differentiates us.”
