We also don't know of any civilizations, or even peoples on Earth, that survived after discovering the philosopher's stone and being punished by God for their vanity.

Putting physics research on hold to account for such a risk seems a bit silly though, and should definitely be classified as "speculative".

Point being, the Kardashev scale is sci-fi, not science, and any worry about it is the very definition of speculative.

> Putting physics research on hold to account for such a risk seems a bit silly though, and should definitely be classified as "speculative".

I think we have as much choice in putting research into anything (AI / Physics) onto hold as monkeys had in evolving to humans to be kept in zoos and being used for experiments, I was not arguing against research.

In my mind it will just all happen naturally, and we can't do anything to stop ourselves from being ruled over by AI, as we don't have the capability for global scale concensus anyways.

We don't whether any intelligent life within detectable range has evolved. Intelligent civilizations could be rare enough that they're too far away. We simply don't know. Life itself could be incredibly rare, so no conclusions can be drawn.

we can't even prove that other civilizations even exist. c'mon. statistical likelihoods don't prove anything. never having seen a thing doesn't prove it never existed.