While previous industrial revolutions - bringing the benefits of modern agriculture, utilities, manufacturing and computing - had brought about an ever-increasing boost to living standards, he said, the dramatic changes underway right now were not guaranteed to do so.
What the advances in artificial intelligence, robotics, 3D printing, nanotechnology and self-driving vehicles would do, Davis predicted, was "fundamentally change the way we create value and do business, and value ourselves as human beings."
The risk was that, without updating our social institutions, the tech revolution would create big winners and even bigger losers, threatening to send our standard of living into a tailspin.
No matter who you talk to about what will happen with the future of the job market", Davis said, "we don't know.
"We have instead a series of increasingly interesting, but increasingly challenging, analyses and pieces of data that are making us concerned."
Self-driving vehicles were expected to put long-distance truck drivers out of business within a decade, he said, while other jobs would be substantially altered.
But, he was quick to point out, "this has always happened".
In the 1950s and 1960s it was the utilities, agriculture and manufacturing industries that took a hit; today it is the services.
According to WEF researchers, 35 per cent of the core skills needed in the workforce will be transformed between 2015 and 2020 due to changes in technology.
Critical thinking, creativity, emotional intelligence and cognitive flexibility will be more important than ever before, as machines take over many of the tasks we currently do each day.
"The issue remains though, you can get a lot of great jobs if you are good at relating to others, also if you are very technical, but what about everyone else?" Davis said.
One of the most alarming sets of data, he said, was coming out of the United States.
Life expectancy in the US - a measure that is supposed to keep gradually increasing - last year marked its first drop since 1993, when HIV-related deaths were at their peak.
The surprise fall, which experts described as "a uniquely American phenomenon" among developed nations, was attributed by some researchers to "the strain of income inequality".
"The fear is that, actually, rising inequality is pulling us down rather than up," Davis said.
"It's a sign that we're not perhaps delivering the benefits of technology the way we have in the past."
Ensuring that the benefits of the fourth industrial revolution were distributed fairly was one of its biggest challenges, he said.
"We talk about technology as if everyone leads the privileged lives we do ... There are conversations we need to have, and the big question is, 'how do we stay human centred?'"
This meant "getting our institutions up to speed", he said - and rethinking the reliance on jobs to distribute society's wealth, with the possibility of introducing a universal basic income.
"The [Australian] Reserve Bank and politicians say it's a crazy idea, that it would be unaffordable," Davis said.
"I'm not saying we should adopt it, but we should have a serious conversation about it."
"The beautiful thing about the state that we are in today is that we have the power to create a future we want, but it takes a few things to get there."