Desire doesn’t really matter. Will the paper clip maximizer “desire” something? It’ll decide on a goal with some random heuristic and then pursue that goal. I’m not sure I’d call that desire but again I feel like desire is not important for it to be able to destroy things

I agree the concept isn't really important on the safety front.

I feel the same way about debates whether an AI can be conscious or sentient. Those debates devolve mostly into definitional disagreements.

If you give a monkey a revolver it will be able to destroy things pretty easily too.