Current estimates place the number of habitable planets in the observable universe at somewhere around ten thousand billion billion.
10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 places that could harbor life...and that's just counting life similar to ours, and in the tiny sector of the universe which we can observe. Broaden either or both of those parameters a bit and you can start adding whole bunch of extra zeros.
Maybe the trend we are seeing here on Earth is a common one throughout the cosmos. A planet develops life...which evolves and eventually attains intelligence...at which point it stops evolving and starts devolving, because it's now "smart" enough to create a society that cares for the sick, the weak, the stupid and encourages them to continue wholesale breeding.
These generic beings' brains contain so much
information...but so little
intelligence...and they're faced with so many problems that their basic nature prevents them from solving that they blow themselves back to the Stone Age. Maybe they do it themselves; maybe they're so "smart" that they build a machine to do all that pesky thinking for them, and it decides to do the deed. If they or it are really smart maybe they literally destroy themselves and the entire ecosphere of their planet completely, although the odds are that some primitive creatures will survive...and re-populate...and evolve...and get "smart"...and...well, you know.
AI doesn't need to be or possess a perfect brain with Ultimate Intelligence to enslave or control or destroy the planet...it just needs to be a wee bit smarter than we are to have its way. Doesn't sound too challenging.
Either way, for them it's a disaster...but for the universe, it's just another day.
Who is to say that this is not the natural order of things?
Yeah, yeah, I know...I gotta stay out of the Lounge...
