The Bank of England's chief economist, Andy Haldane, has warned that artificial intelligence and machines have the potential to make a huge number of jobs obsolete, with thousands of UK workers facing unemployment due to new technology. Mr Haldane told the BBC that the "Fourth Industrial Revolution" would be on a "much greater scale" than the previous three, and said the UK will need a skills revolution to avoid unemployment on a mass scale. He said that previous industrial revolutions had "a wrenching and lengthy impact on the jobs market, on the lives and livelihoods of large swathes of society". "Jobs were effectively taken by machines of various types, there was a hollowing out of the jobs market, and that left a lot of people for a lengthy period out of work and struggling to make a living," he said. "That heightened social tensions, it heightened financial tensions, it led to a rise in inequality. This is the dark side of technological revolutions and that dark side has always been there."

The rise of artificial intelligence will have a "dark" fallout that is even more disruptive than previous industrial revolutions, the Bank of England's chief economist has warned. Andy Haldane predicted that the "Fourth Industrial Revolution" would be on a much greater scale than those of the 18th to 20th centuries and would lead to huge job losses and societal changes. Automation has already displaced millions of low-skilled jobs. Experts predict that artificial intelligence (AI) will displace millions more roles in the next two decades as technologies such as driverless cars and lorries and software that can perform increasingly sophisticated roles come into use. The Serious Fraud Office already uses AI instead of barristers to sift through case documents to identify relevant evidence.