ROBOT WARNING: Artificial intelligence to steal 'thinking jobs within 45 YEARS'

As a result, the chief economist has called on a huge skills drive so that those who are displaced by robots in the workplace will be better equipped to find a new career when the inevitable does happen. Mr Haldane continued: "Given that the scale of job loss, job displacement is likely to be at least as large as that of the first three industrial revolutions, we will need even greater numbers of new jobs to be created in the future if we are not to suffer this longer term feature called technological unemployment. "It has not been a feature of the past, but could it possibly be a feature of the future? I think that is a much more open question than at any previous point possibly in history." He adds that the previous industrial revolutions had a "wrenching and lengthy impact on the jobs market, on the lives and livelihoods of large swathes of society."