Will the technology bring to the third world war?

The opinions about if there will be or not a third world war are conflicting, even if for the highest part those are focused on a positive answer.

The real question that many wonder is if this third world war already started. How destructive may be a global conflict in a such technological and advanced scenario as the nowadays one?

Did the human beings really learn the lesson from the past errors and do they know the consequences of the usage of the weapons of mass destruction that exist at the moment?

Probably a hypothetical third world war won’t be fight on the field, which means in a conventional way. With many probabilities it will be a digital war, fought between informatical and commercial battles.

Probably it already started and we don’t even know it or maybe it will never happen. However are many the ones that don’t believe at all in the human race and fear the worst.

“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones!”

Jack Ma

Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba, as well as the richest man of the China, isn’t new about scaremongering for a hypothetical World War Three.

Already in the 2017 he launched the allarm for a “technological” third world war. Now, with the 2019 just started, he comes back to claim his ideas, by saying that, this time, we are really close to a global conflict.

Accomplice of the “prophecy” even the war of duties which is ongoing between China and United States, fall back again in the oblivion after the events that saw involved Meng Wanzhou, the daughter of the Huawei‘s founder.

According to Jack Ma it isn’t only a baseless theory, but it is the same history of the human race to talk: “The first world war was because of the first technology revolution. The second technology revolution caused the second world war. This is the third technology revolution: we’re coming”.

“Do you know how many times we’ve come close to World War III over a flock of geese on a computer screen? Do you even know what triggered the last world war? An argument with Germany over how many telegraph poles they owned their war debt creditors. Telegraph poles!” – Joker in “Batman”

Elon Musk

Jack Ma isn’t the only one to claim that the technology will bring to the third world war. Many in the technology and innovation field think the same.

Even Elon Musk let arise similar theories, meanly speaking about the artificial intelligence, the machine learning and the robotic: “We might teach at school the new generations, not only about what it is, but even about what we are able to do that the machines are not”.

Elon Musk is for a while that strongly fights to not let the artificial intelligence arrive to the consciousness stage.

Reaching the technological singularity will be, infact, a terrible mistake. At that point, though, arise a much more complex question: are we still considering a third world war where both the parties are composed by human beings?

Not only negative aspects

By the way this time the Jack Ma’s prophecy is enriched with particular positive implications. Probably the technology, if carefully used, isn’t only bad at all.

According to the Alibaba’s CEO, infact, the intelligent machines might become crucial to fight the global warming and pollution generated by the fossil fuels.

The negative way that the planet took in the last years might bring us to forget the ancient disagreements that bring to a global conflict and to joint the efforts to save us.

“I’m not a technology person…”, says, finally, Jack Ma, “…but I’m a believer that technology is great for human beings. And as a technical company don’t be evil is not enough.

You should do good things for the world, do good things for the future and believe in young people”.

This post is also available in: Italiano