Robots will take over 45pc of all jobs in manufacturing and shave $9 trillion off labour costs within a decade, leaving great swathes of the global society on the historical scrap heap.

In a sweeping 300-page report, Bank of America predicts that robots and other forms of artificial intelligence will transform the world beyond recognition as soon as 2025, shattering old business models in a whirlwind of “creative disruption”, with transformation effects ultimately amounting to $30 trillion or more each year.

The report said the demand for automation is “skyrocketing” as the world’s population ages – with the number of people over 60 expected to rise from 841m to more than 2bn by the middle of the century – and as the once limitless supply of cheap labour dries up in Asia.

Manufacturing wages in China have jumped ninefold since 2000, and thecountry’s workforce is shrinking. China is already the world’s biggest buyer of robots, making up a quarter of the global market.

The costs of robots, "care-bots" for the elderly, "agribots" to plants seeds or pick fruit, commercial drones and artificial intelligence have, on average, dropped by 27pc over the past 10 years, and are expected to fall a further 22pc by 2005.