Have humans broken the "chain of stability"?

It also comes to mind that evolving is a kind of unstableness. For example the energy innovation introduced oxygen into the air certainly filtered out a lot of development paths. This wasn't that much due to external circumstances. We didn't survive the cold war of oxygen.

Also how long do dolphins and octopusses have time to come up with current human level intelligence until considered "filtered out"? I would recorn they would still have atleast a couple ten million years left.

What if the reason we got so far was because we didn't evolve that rapidly and could thus develop more enduring traits ie we were boring? A planet that evolves to from one chemistry to another might do a lot of work on keeping the basics of kinetics going but not really getting deep in any branch or spend time adapting to circumstances that come about in a unique way that won't be repeated. That migth up the level of danger from AI. The AI might do more damage than simple extinction of humans it can to some extent try to dial the clock back on evolution. If that kind of "negative progress" is possible giving arbitrary time won't force an inevitable progress state.

Anyone know any basis to believe that non-progressive or anti-progressive evolution could overshadow progressive evolution?