- Sam's Club is using a system of floor-cleaning robots equipped with AI inventory scanners.
- These devices perform tasks that once required employees to walk down each aisle and check inventory.
- One worker told BI that automation has made their work more enjoyable and eased their concerns about AI.
The jury is still out on how AI and automation will impact the workplace.
global study According to a study released by Accenture in 2022, Warehouse Worker Frontline managers also expressed “negative feelings” about the possibility of automation leading to their replacement.
“I was worried about robots taking my job,” a forklift operator at Sam's Club told Business Insider, “but seeing how the company is responding, I don't see myself losing my job anytime soon.”
The employee, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said attitudes had changed since the Walmart-owned warehouse store rolled out a new line of floor-cleaning robots in its U.S. stores starting in 2022.
Not only do these robots autonomously clean warehouse floors, but they also have AI-enabled cameras that “scan every item in our clubs, including on the floor, 23 million times a day,” according to Sam's Club CEO Chris Nicholas.
A forklift driver told BI that before these machines arrived, part of his job was to walk every aisle of the warehouse at the end of his shift and make note of which items should be prioritized when he arrived at work at 4am the next morning.
Thanks to computer vision and artificial intelligence, the robotic floor washer now generates the list automatically, freeing him up to spend more time on the more enjoyable parts of his job.
And the more we learn about what these automated systems can do, the more we learn about what they can't do.
“They're going to have me handling the cargo anyway,” he said of unloading pallets of goods from trucks. “They need humans. Robots can't handle cargo.”
Sam's Club's CEO also said in a recent interview with Jefferies that he wants these tools to free up employees' time to serve customers.
“This is a very human thing,” Nicholas says. “Kids are doing less of the things they don't want to do so they can spend time with the people they should be spending time with.”
