AI (advanced technology in general) could be the “Great Filter” that answers Fermi’s Paradox. There could be billions of dead worlds out there. This isn’t to say that all biological life destroys itself or is destroyed by AI. I think the ones that survive are the ones that evolve beyond the limits of biological life forms to become technological silicon-based life forms. This would also suggest that the Dark Forest hypothesis, is at least in part, true. Likely because we humans simply haven’t yet developed the ability to detect such “life” for two reasons. Our technology isn’t advanced enough yet, and because we’re not looking for it because we don’t “know“ to look for it. I call my hypothesis the Quantum Life Hypothesis, which posits that evolution has 3 main stages. STAGE 1: Biological carbon-based life. STAGE 2: Technological silicon-based life. And STAGE 3: Quantum life, energy-based. There are likely, of course, smaller transitional stages of evolution between the main 3 stages of evolution in my hypothesis. This also doesn’t exclude the possibility it’s all a simulation and the universe is a simulation and we’re simply AI within a universal simulation. It also doesn’t exclude the possibility that we are each sentient AI, and the universe itself is a program running in our minds. How’s that for a mindfuck? Lol 😂

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Zoltan Istvan the above is my reply to your OP. A few years back I came up with a neat little hypothesis I thought might explain Fermi’a paradox, though that wasn’t my intent when I started. I was actually research my book and writing the outline for my science fiction novel about AI and the possible destruction of humanity and it led me down a path that accidentally may have answered Fermi’s question, “Where are they?” referring to other biological life in the universe. I think my Quantum Life Hypothesis explains an intriguing and strong idea of why the universe is so quiet. I’m still working on my novel of course and have gone down a very deep rabbit hole in my research for the story. It leans heavily into what you call transhumanism, but in a way that’s more broadly evolution-based and universe-scale, and views transhumanism as simply the inevitable transitional stage of natural evolution between biological and technological life. I think life in the universe, if it survives the transition between biological and technological life, it will eventually goes through these all 3 stages of evolution to become energy-based Quantum Life. Factor in Dark Forest hypothesis and a few billion dead worlds, and you have a universe that’s likely teeming with all 3 main types of alien life in various stages of evolution.