In a lot of hypothetical misalignment scenarios, the AI’s goal is to repurpose resources that humans are using. This results in our extinction as all the atoms in the world are repurposed for AI stuff. Yudkowsky describes this in ‘If we build it, everyone dies’. It ends with the AI spreading into space to exploit the resources and energy available there.
However, we haven’t seen any Dyson spheres in our light cone. This would be the logical conclusion of an AI that seeks to maximise its use of energy and matter.
This implies (in no particular order)
a) Yudkowsky style misalignment is rare/non-existent on a cosmic scale
b) Yudkowsky style misalignment is common but dark forest theory holds true
c) We’re alone in the universe
If we allow vN probes, our own existence becomes quite surprising. Why would they arrive into our solar system now as opposed to 1 billion years earlier?
I think that the cosmological evidence suggests against the existence of cosmic expanders (or they already did turn the universe into computronium and we’re in an ancestor simulation).