Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt has predicted the end of the Internet as we know it - but said technology would lead to new jobs for people.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, he was asked for his prediction on the future of the Web.

'I will answer very simply that the Internet will disappear,' Schmidt said.

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Eric Schmidt told the World Economic Forum in Davos the internet we know it will disappear - but that online sensors will be everywhere around us

ERIC SCHMIDT ON AI Schmidt has previously defended the rise of Artificial Intelligence, arguing that there is no need to fear AI, and it could even be the making of humanity. 'These concerns are normal,' he said onstage during the Financial Times Innovate America event in New York last month. 'They're also to some degree misguided.' The Google chief, who is involved in the development of AI in applications such as self-driving cars, also says that the fear of robots stealing human jobs is unwarranted. 'There's lots of evidence that when computers show up, wages go up,' he said. Advertisement

'There will be so many IP addresses…so many devices, sensors, things that you are wearing, things that you are interacting with that you won't even sense it,' he explained, according to Hollywood Reporter.

'It will be part of your presence all the time.

'Imagine you walk into a room, and the room is dynamic.

'And with your permission and all of that, you are interacting with the things going on in the room.'

He said the move would be a big opportunity for technology firms, saying: 'A highly personalized, highly interactive and very, very interesting world emerges.'

The panel, entitled The Future of the Digital Economy, also featured Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and others.

Schmidt also claimed advances in technology will create a wave of new jobs and dismissed suggestions that innovation threatened a generation of workers.

He said that for every job created in the sector, there were seven more created in non-technology roles, and claimed that a digital single market in Europe would help to create 4m new jobs.

'What happens to the job that is lost?

'It's the same thing that happened when people stopped farming and started using tractors.

'They find new skills and services.

'So while there is an enormous assumption that this time it's different.

'That somehow no one is going to have a job in the world, and it's just going to be the Davos elite who is going to have a good time and everyone else is going to be rioting is completely false.'

The panel, entitled The Future of the Digital Economy, also featured Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and others.

Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer at Facebook, agreed that technology was both a 'creator and destroyer of jobs', but said the benefits outweighed the costs.

'Technology creates jobs in non-tech world', she said.

Schmidt also discussed the issue of market dominance.

'You now see so many strong tech platforms coming, and you are seeing a reordering and a future reordering of dominance or leaders or whatever term you want to use because of the rise of the apps on the smartphone.

'All bets are off at this point as to what the smartphone app infrastructure is going to look like' as a 'whole new set' of players emerges to power smartphones, which are nothing but super-computers, the Google chairman argued.

'I view that as a completely open market at this point.'

Sandberg and Schmidt lauded the Internet as an important way to give more people in the world a voice.

Currently, only 40 percent of people have Internet access, the Facebook COO said, adding that any growth in reach helps extend people's voice and increase economic opportunity.

Yahoo's Marissa Meyer said the online giant 'changed the way we store and communicate data' after Snowden and also changed encryptions between data centers.

'I'm a huge optimist,' she said about her outlook for the industry.

'Imagine what we can do' once the world gets to 50 percent, 60 percent and more in terms of Internet penetration.

She cited women as being among the beneficiaries, saying the Internet narrows divides.

Yahoo's Marissa addressed the issue of regulation.

'I like Tim's idea better of the beneficent marketplace.' She spoke of fellow panelist and computer specialist Tim Berners-Lee, known as the inventor of the World Wide Web.

Asked how Yahoo stores and handles client records, she said the online giant 'changed the way we store and communicate data' after Snowden and also changed encryptions between data centres.