Much of the discussion of the fourth industrial revolution relates to the disruptive impact of artificial intelligence, robotics, biotech, and big data on the world of work and business. It could lead to huge gains in productivity, wealth creation and human happiness. Equally, it may kill millions of jobs, fuel social tensions, and widen inequality. Civil society's place in this massive societal shake-out, reckons Andy Haldane, is relatively unexplored – but it will be profound. Haldane, the Bank of England's chief economist, is regarded as a "maverick" thinker among central bankers on account not only of his views on banking and financial regulation, but society more widely: from poverty ("scarcity of money reshapes your brain and reshapes your decision-making") to the importance of trade unions.

Millions of jobs are likely to be displaced by automation but we have less to fear from robots than some might think, a report from the World Economic Forum has suggested. The Swiss think tank predicts that robots will displace 75 million jobs globally by 2022 but create 133 million new ones - a "net positive". It said advances in computing would free up workers for new tasks. But others have warned there is no guarantee lost jobs will be replaced. The WEF, which runs the famous Davos networking event, said that robots and algorithms would "vastly improve" the productivity of existing jobs and lead to many new ones in the coming years.

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."

Speaking to the BBC this week, chief economist at the Bank of England Andy Haldane said that disruption caused by the Fourth Industrial Revolution would be "on a much greater scale" than that experienced during the First Industrial Revolution in the Victorian period. Advising that the UK required a skills revolution to counteract individuals becoming "technologically unemployed", Haldane said that training was necessary to ensure workers could leverage new job opportunities as they became available in the era of artificial intelligence. The accountancy industry is one sector primed to capitalise on the rise of artificial intelligence and machine learning. The sector has already embraced automation, with intelligent software removing the traditional compliance aspect of the accountant role. And, as the government's Making Tax Digital initiative edges ever closer, the implementation of a digital tax system has encouraged accountants across the UK to confront how they view and employ technology on a day-to-day basis.

'The chief economist of the Bank of England has warned that the UK will need a skills revolution to avoid "large swathes" of people becoming "technologically unemployed" as artificial intelligence makes many jobs obsolete. Andy Haldane said the possible disruption of what is known as the Fourth Industrial Revolution could be "on a much greater scale" than anything felt during the First Industrial Revolution of the Victorian era. He said that he had seen a widespread "hollowing out" of the jobs market, rising inequality, social tension and many people struggling to make a living. It was important to learn the "lessons of history", he argued, and ensure that people were given the training to take advantage of the new jobs that would become available. He added that in the past a safety net such as new welfare benefits had also been provided.

The chief economist of Bank of England, Andy Haldane alerted that the UK will need to avoid "large swathes" of people becoming "technologically unemployed" as a result of using artificial intelligence across industries. Haldane said: "Each of those [industrial revolutions] had a wrenching and lengthy impact on the jobs market, on the lives and livelihoods of large swathes of society," Mr Haldane told me for the Today Programme. "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. "That heightened social tensions, it heightened financial tensions, it led to a rise in inequality. "That hollowing out is going to be potentially on a much greater scale in the future, when we have machines both thinking and doing--replacing both the cognitive and the technical skills of humans."

Britain faces the threat of social unrest as robots take'swathes' of jobs, the Bank of England's chief economist warned today. Andy Haldane said the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution will see'the machine replacing humans doing thinking things'. He cautioned that the'dark side' of the change could be disruption on a much bigger scale than in Victorian times, with professions such as accountancy among those at risk. The stark message came amid calls for a massive skills drive to find employment for those set to be affected by the next wave of automation. In an interview with BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Mr Haldane said: 'The first three industrial revolutions have been about largely machines replacing humans doing principally manual tasks, whereas the fourth will be different.

The chief economist of the Bank of England has warned that the UK will need a skills revolution to avoid "large swathes" of people becoming "technologically unemployed" as artificial intelligence makes many jobs obsolete. Andy Haldane said the possible disruption of what is known as the Fourth Industrial Revolution could be "on a much greater scale" than anything felt during the First Industrial Revolution of the Victorian era. He said that he had seen a widespread "hollowing out" of the jobs market, rising inequality, social tension and many people struggling to make a living. It was important to learn the "lessons of history", he argued, and ensure that people were given the training to take advantage of the new jobs that would become available. He added that in the past a safety net such as new welfare benefits had also been provided.

The Bank of England has weighed into a debate on the looming impact of AI on our lives, most pertinently the jobs market, by calling for a skills revolution to prevent sections of society from becoming'technologically unemployed'. The bank's chief economist, Andy Haldane, issued his call to action with a prediction that the coming Fourth Industrial Revolution will be of a'much greater scale' than the industrial revolution Britain underwent in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Haldane fears that a failure to adapt to these changes in good time could augur a period of rising inequality, social tension and a'hollowing out' of employment, and argues for new training to be put into place now to prevent such an eventuality from coming to pass. Speaking to the BBC's Today programme, Haldane said: "This is the dark side of technological revolutions and that dark-side has always been there. "That hollowing out is going to be potentially on a much greater scale in the future, when we have machines both thinking and doing - replacing both the cognitive and the technical skills of humans." Haldane isn't entirely pessimistic, however, believing that a new class of jobs could emerge to compensate for those lost. He concedes that any attempt to quantify this counter shift is currently lost in the realms of speculation. He added: "What we can I think say with some confidence, however, is that given that the scale of job loss displacement it is likely to be at least as large as that of the first three industrial revolutions.

The chief economist of the Bank of England has warned that the UK will need a skills revolution to avoid "large swathes" of people becoming "technologically unemployed" as artificial intelligence makes many jobs obsolete. Andy Haldane said the possible disruption of what is known as the Fourth Industrial Revolution could be "on a much greater scale" than anything felt during the First Industrial Revolution of the Victorian era. He said that he had seen a widespread "hollowing out" of the jobs market, rising inequality, social tension and many people struggling to make a living. He also argued that it was important to learn the "lessons of history" and ensure that people were given the training to take advantage of the new jobs that would become available. He said that in the past a safety net such as new welfare benefits had also been provided.