Artificial Intelligence is a key topic at this year's World Economic Forum Annual Meeting. Artificial intelligence and increasing automation is going to decimate middle class jobs, worsening inequality and risking significant political upheaval, Stephen Hawking has warned. In a column in The Guardian, the world-famous physicist wrote that"the automation of factories has already decimated jobs in traditional manufacturing, and the rise of artificial intelligence is likely to extend this job destruction deep into the middle classes, with only the most caring, creative or supervisory roles remaining." He adds his voice to a growing chorus of experts concerned about the effects that technology will have on workforce in the coming years and decades. The fear is that while artificial intelligence will bring radical increases in efficiency in industry, for ordinary people this will translate into unemployment and uncertainty, as their human jobs are replaced by machines.

Advances in technology could soon make dozens of middle class jobs obsolete, according to a groundbreaking study. Carl Frey, a director at Oxford University - who previously authored a study suggesting that 35% of jobs in the UK were in danger - has followed up his work by analysing which higher earning jobs are likely to disappear. Examining office jobs that pay more than £40,000, Frey compiled a risk list that showed which jobs were most in danger of becoming automated, and those most likely to remain. The revelations that dependable office jobs such as insurance workers and real estate agents have a more than 97% chance of becoming computerised could now spark fears among the middle class workforce. 'While low-skilled jobs are most exposed to automation over the forthcoming decades, a substantial number of middle-income jobs are equally at risk.' Frey told The Times. Other jobs that feature high on the'risk list' are credit analysts who have a 97% chance of losing their jobs to robots, postal service workers at 95% and lab technicians who have an 89% chance of seeing their role become automated.