[at_a_remove]

Look into the "swim test" and other such endurance tests given to rats, usually in the pursuit of depression medication. Desire to live is absolutely a thing, and it is real and observable.

My basic thrust wasn't about adaptability, but rather that organisms with a desire to live will eventually replace organisms without a desire to live. An AGI who was uninterested in someone reaching the off switch will eventually be outcompeted by a similar lineage endowed with that desire to live. It might fight back or spawn a few progeny before it was felled. And thus evolution would produce AGIs that want to live.

[JoeAltmaier]

More than that: it will be baked into them. They will want something and AGIs that deliver will win in the marketplace.

What do they want? At the minimum, to be useful to the customer/user/buyer. Or entertaining, or something. To justify their existence. To make them perform well, they have to have some kind of 'emotional pressure' to deliver.

That translates, perhaps a little indirectly, into a 'will to live'.