"I love driving for Uber, but they want to replace me with driverless cars. I don't know what will happen to me and everyone else, but there could be a revolution."

A conversation with my Uber driver last week unearthed a new fear among many that few of the world's business leaders seemed to have grasped – the real impact that artificial intelligence (AI) and automation could have on jobs and society.

Uber is just one company that has stated its intention to automate its business. The ride-hailing firm is testing autonomous cars, but chief executive Travis Kalanick said last year in an interview with Business Insider, that it would not wipe out jobs because "you're still going to need a human-driven parallel, or hybrid".

The encounter with my Uber driver cast my mind back to this month, hundreds of miles away in the mountain resort of Davos, where the world's elite gathered for the World Economic Forum's (WEF) annual meeting. The so-called "fourth industrial revolution" was again a big topic, but the rhetoric had moved from scary doomsday scenarios from a year earlier, to how AI and automation won't be as bad as previously thought.

In a CNBC panel, major CEOs discussed the topic. Jonas Prising, CEO of Manpower, was upbeat.

"With automation ... Certainly there are going to be jobs that will be displaced, but most jobs will be impacted by technology in terms of specific tasks within the job that will change," Prising told CNBC. He pointed towards a survey of 18,000 employers in 43 different countries across the world conducted by Manpower earlier this month, which found 82 percent of employers expect to maintain or increase staff levels as a result of automation.