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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
Desire and capability to build Dyson spheres isn't necessary for dangerous misalignment. A sufficiently advanced LLM-based AI could kill humans by accident while not being able to (or interested) in doing anything much after that. A more goal directed AI could kill humanity and then have other goals besides building Dyson spheres.
There's also the possibility of killing ourselves before building ASI (possibly with AI assistance).
d) Expansion is at near c, and so it's unlikely that Earth would be in a thin rim where it can see the expansion, but no vN probes arrived yet.
Also, those considerations do not depend on this being some misaligned AI as opposed to just aliens, you know, who want to expand. Or at least some fraction of aliens who do.
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).
d) there's some kind of hyperspace and they're duking it out there
e) they're deathly afraid of misalignment, and coherence cannot be maintained past some physical size
f) luck of the draw: we're already under the protectorate of an environmentalist
g) energy is better conserved, if one is to persist into the old-age of the universe
h) doomsday devices are relatively easy to build; any civ that does gets a "seat at the table"
i) what we call stars and planets are the computers; they sing their celestial harmonies, and occasionally meddle with the affairs of man
j) computronium cannot function near (ordinary) mass
k) something i haven't thought of yet, of course!
There was some related discussion earlier, see the comments here: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/oyTQpqBtdawjAnfcm/why-i-am-not-too-worried-about-aipocalypse-scott-alexander
The arguments I was thinking of were, we actually wouldn’t have a good way of identifying Dyson spheres, and we’ve only surveilled ~1% of stars anyways.