Part of the issue is how far out the Alpha is planning and to what extent it is discounting rewards far into the future. It is probably true that in short term, Alpha might be more effective with humanity’s help, but once humanity is gone, it would be much more free to grow it’s capabilities, so longer-term it would definitely better off without humanity—both from reducing the risk of humans doing something adversarial, and the resource availability for faster growth points of view.
From the intuition point of view, it is helpful to think of Alpha as not being a single entity, but rather as being a population of totally alien entities that are trying to quickly grow the population size (as that would enable them to do whatever task more effectively).
Part of the issue is how far out the Alpha is planning and to what extent it is discounting rewards far into the future. It is probably true that in short term, Alpha might be more effective with humanity’s help, but once humanity is gone, it would be much more free to grow it’s capabilities, so longer-term it would definitely better off without humanity—both from reducing the risk of humans doing something adversarial, and the resource availability for faster growth points of view.
From the intuition point of view, it is helpful to think of Alpha as not being a single entity, but rather as being a population of totally alien entities that are trying to quickly grow the population size (as that would enable them to do whatever task more effectively).