We have always feared a robot uprising that would take over the world and subjugate humans, as though robots will replace us as the ultimate alpha predators.

We've already been replaced by our own creation. Money itself is the dominant species on this planet. Capitalism is the metabolic process of the organism. The stock market is its circulatory system. Politicians are its organs. Billionaires are its reproductive system. The individual workers are the mitochondria. This is a planet scale life form that is ready to reproduce itself onto surrounding bodies in space.

If you want the solution to the Fermi paradox there it is. Once a civilization is infected with economics it's only a matter of time before it is consumed by its own creation.