equating more intelligent to "wanting things" is a fallacy. You can have a hyper intelligent computer that simply waits for you to ask it to do a job, or you can endow it with the digital equivalent of hunger and reproductive instincts and it will behave completely differently.

We would be INSANE to pursue giving that type of instincts to AIs.

For some senses of “wanting things”, I think it might be hard to make a powerful AI that couldn’t be easily modified to produce one that “wants things” in some sense.

So, if it would be bad thing for one to be made that “wants things” in any reasonable sense of the phrase, then it would probably be bad for J Random to be able to take a copy of a powerful AI and modify it in some way, because someone is likely to try doing that.

Of course, perhaps the best way to make sure that J Random doesn’t have the ability to do that, is to make sure no one does.

You are making a claim that "Intelligenece" is separable from other things found in humans and other animals. There is no proof or example supporting this.

I have come to beleive that we will only be able to truly replicate intelligence if the system was trying to preserve itself. Its the biggest incentive ever to do intelligent things.