Five years after AGI, will there have been a World War III?

World War I was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. One of the deadliest conflicts in history, an estimated 9 million combatants and 7 million civilians died as a direct result of the war.

World War II was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. A state of total war emerged, directly involving more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history, marked by 50 to 85 million fatalities, most of whom were civilians in China or the Soviet Union. It included massacres, the genocide of the Holocaust, strategic bombing, premeditated death from starvation and disease, and the only historical use of nuclear weapons in war.

World War III is the name given to a hypothetical third worldwide military conflict. The name has been in use since at least as early as 1941. Some have applied it loosely to refer to limited or smaller conflicts such as the Cold War or the War on Terror, while others have operated under the assumption that such a conflict would surpass both prior world wars in both scope and destructiveness.

As of 2024, World War III has not happened. There have, however, been a number of close calls that are widely regarded as having been narrowly-missed, possible catalysts for such a conflict.

Meanwhile, some experts have warned that AGI could bring military instability, for example, through nuclear deterrence being undermined, or through a multipolar bargaining failure:

Early AGIs might fail to make compatible demands with each other in high-stakes negotiations (we call this a “bargaining failure”). Bargaining failures can have catastrophic consequences, including great power conflicts, or AI triggering a flash war. —Macé, DiGiovanni and Clifton, 2024

In 1949, after the unleashing of nuclear weaponry at the end of WWII, physicist Albert Einstein suggested that any outcome of a possible WWIII would be so dire as to revert mankind back to the Stone Age. When asked by journalist Alfred Werner what types of weapons Einstein believed World War III might be fought with, Einstein warned, “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”

(H/T @Jgalt for writing the “Will there be a "World War Three" before 2050?” question, from which this one was adapted.)