Regarding the likelihood (not the value) of intergalactic alien civilizations you might be intrested in this post on Quantifying anthropic effects on the Fermi paradox by Lukas Finnveden. E.g., he concludes:
If you accept the self-indication assumption, you should be almost certain that we’ll encounter other civilisations if we leave the galaxy. In this case, 95 % of the reachable universe will already be colonised when Earth-originating intelligence arrives, in expectation.
Of the remaining 5 %, around 70 % would eventually be reached by other civilisations, while 30 % would have remained empty in our absence.
I think the 70%/30% numbers are the relevant ones for comparing human colonization vs. extinction vs. misaligned AGI colonization. (Since 5% cuts the importance of everything equally.)
...assuming defensive dominance in space, where you get to keep space that you acquire first. I don’t know what happens without that.
This would suggest that if we’re indifferent between space being totally uncolonized and being colonized by a certain misaligned AGI and if we’re indifferent between aliens and humans colonizing space: then preventing that AGI is ~3x as good as preventing extinction.
If we value aliens less than humans, it’s less. If we value the AGI positively, it’s also less. If we value the AGI negatively, it’d be more.
Regarding the likelihood (not the value) of intergalactic alien civilizations you might be intrested in this post on Quantifying anthropic effects on the Fermi paradox by Lukas Finnveden. E.g., he concludes:
The quote continues:
I think the 70%/30% numbers are the relevant ones for comparing human colonization vs. extinction vs. misaligned AGI colonization. (Since 5% cuts the importance of everything equally.)
...assuming defensive dominance in space, where you get to keep space that you acquire first. I don’t know what happens without that.
This would suggest that if we’re indifferent between space being totally uncolonized and being colonized by a certain misaligned AGI and if we’re indifferent between aliens and humans colonizing space: then preventing that AGI is ~3x as good as preventing extinction.
If we value aliens less than humans, it’s less. If we value the AGI positively, it’s also less. If we value the AGI negatively, it’d be more.