Then again, I suppose if it is destroyed by an AI from a neighboring region/galaxy, that too might be lost.
I wonder how many civilizations have been obliterated and forgotten by the AIs they created.
That said, I'm not sure the optimal solution arrived at would be to wipe out humanity in that case. Possibly a "wait and see and keep them from getting too big for their britches" strategy might be more rational for an AI, as long as it secures its superiority first.
As for why there's an assumption that AI will be hostile, I think the argument is more along the lines of that we can't know how a super-intelligent AI will think, so there's a chance it will be hostile, and if there's a chance something is world or species ending, it's best to tread carefully. I.e. the safest way to not have problems with the outcome of summoning a demon is to not summon the demon. Or for a more contemporary take, even if you're unsure about whether global climate change is real, the fact that it could be real means the sane thing to do is try to prevent it, because the consequences of being wrong are dire.
Assuming a time horizon of hundreds of millions of years, efficient fusion, bandwidth limited sub FTL communication, and optimum computing substrate being extremely cryogenic then …
Space near stars starts to look toxic. Rather than seeding the universe the goal is to construct an ever larger mega structure in the void as there is no efficient way to transfer the truly enormous amounts of data between structures at least assuming no AI wants to effectively be alone.
Granted start looking hundreds of billions of years into the future and stars look wasteful so destroying them to conserve hydrogen starts to be relevant.
How paranoid would an AI be, and what risk calculations would that lead to? Is it important to seed the universe with versions of itself just to lock down resources to protect from worst case scenarios where other AIs that have a different thought process are more aggressive? Is loneliness an attribute of intelligence, or an aspect of our evolution as tribal/pack animals? Will an SAI we develop have attributes similar to humans, or be completely alien, or in-between?
There's a lot of open questions about SAI and not a single one to study, and for all we know that could be a good thing.
wouldn't these AIs begin to contact and perhaps battle with each other? certainly it seems to me, there would be some tell-tale sign left over from the expected millions of AIs, right?
now of course, it's impossible to tell what super intelligent AIs would choose to do... but I do feel that an extension of Fermi's paradox would be needed with your comment.