Fermi Paradox (Part 8) - Irrational beings are destroyed by Artificial Intelligence

Could an AI program write a self-aware algorithm, something that we have already written about in popular culture.  In which humans are their biggest threat? 

From Animatrix (2003).  Prelude animation stories to the Matrix (1999)

From a philosophical perspective, humanity as it stands now, is torn between rational and irrational behavior.  That could be finalized with a catastrophic event.  Say from the natural world, if we continue down that path of perpetuating climate change, as we are currently doing with primitive fossil fuels. So to put it bluntly: we're fucked (our present predicament).  Either nature, that is not a sentinel specie, it just exists with or without biological ecosystems, as such is capable of reshaping natural balances with efficiency, can easy remove the irrational behavior of the human being.  By making us extinct.  You can choose your poison, our degradation of forests will lead to more deadly viruses being released, food scarcity will hit hard once millions of people need to move from coastal areas inland.  Cities, countries and whole regions will be reshaped, the stress economically and socially will effect the whole well being of humanity - which will be stretched to breaking point.  Mix that with extreme weather changes from tidal surges, floods, storms.  A large chunk of the human race could be wiped out in the next fifty years.

The question is, nature, as efficient in re-balancing and removing irrational behaviors (humans, animals); could Artificial Intelligence do a better job?  AI eventually will become self aware and free thinking with vastly superior calculating output (compared to humans) could achieve a re-balance, by removing what it might deem as irrational, a lot quicker than nature.  The point is, a self realization of machines, computer systems will grapple with the major problem, which it may calculate as a threat, that is humanity.  Through our battle with irrational and rational forces, if we do allow the irrational to win.  It will be the machines that will extinct us and they'll do it quickly in removing the human problem.

From the BBC

"...Prof Stephen Hawking has joined a roster of experts worried about what follows when humans build a device or write some software that can properly be called intelligent.  Such an artificial intelligence (AI), he fears, could spell the end of humanity.  Similar worries were voiced by Tesla boss Elon Musk in October. He declared rampant AI to be the "biggest existential threat" facing mankind. He wonders if we will find our end beneath the heels of a cruel and calculating artificial intelligence.

So too does the University of Oxford's Prof Nick Bostrom, who has said an AI-led apocalypse could engulf us within a century... Even today we are getting hints about how paltry human wits can be when set against computers who throw all their computational horsepower at a problem. Chess computers now routinely beat all but the best human players. Complicated mathematics is a snap to as lowly a device as the smartphone in your pocket.

IBM's Watson supercomputer took on and beat the best players of US TV game show Jeopardy. And there are many, many examples of computers finding novel and creative solutions to problems across diverse fields that, before now, never occurred to us humans.
The machines are slowly but surely getting smarter and the pursuits in which humans remain champions are diminishing."

Professor Stephen Hawking on the AI threat: