Give us time, we've had less than a century of nukes, and only need to screw up once.

Aside from this positive example, during dark and cynical hours I do ponder if the aggregate behavior of humanity is really much above that of slime mold though, just exhausting resources until collapse.

It'd be interesting if super-human (to a large degree defined as escaping the bias of the training data?) intelligence would end up demonstrating moderation.

Yes, it makes more sense for the AI to use drone swarms or engineered bioweapons or something like that. It's rational to remove everything that can potentially hinder your plans but can't possible help you. It's likely not rational to contaminate it all with radioactive fallout. Those dead bodies are useful raw materials. Adding additional purification steps is wasteful.

Actually "France, the UK and The United States have all declared that they would never allow AI to control decision-making on the use of nuclear weapons." [0]

I also expect AIs never be in control of nuclear weapons. AIs can never fully be trusted.

On a lighter note, Wargames gave us an insight of a computer having access to thermonuclear missiles.

[0] https://www.icanw.org/are_there_specific_international_agree...

There were occasions where a "hunch" was all that stopped a nuclear war - most available data and communication pointed towards a nuclear war starting according to their instructions, but someone disagreed and overrode. See Vasily Arkhipov during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Stanislav Petrov in 1983.

It hasn't even been a century since nuclear holocaust became possible. Hardly any time at all on the grand scale. "They didn't" could just as well be "we haven't, yet".

In what scenario would it be rational to unleash complete and utter permanent nuclear destruction of all life (including artificial) life on earth?