What was the data optimization problem? To pass our genes on? Because lots of critters have been doing it far longer than the big brained ones. Bacteria and viruses are more successful than any life forms, and they're not running any neural equivalent of data optimization.
Well, if you consider nature as an agent, we are part of it. And if we do successfully leave the planet, that will be nature successfully leaving a planet. Which will get nature closer to surviving a sun collapse. Something the rest of nature here is not likely to do.
And, in the scale, nature has had to deal with many stars collapsing.
