You can't get the coffee if you're dead

Written by Eliezer Yudkowsky last updated

"You can't get the coffee if you're dead" is Stuart Russell's capsule description of why almost any agent goal implies an instrumental strategy of surviving / not being shut down--by default and barring other measures to prevent this from happening; and assuming the agent has sufficient big-picture awareness to understand the relation between the agent's non-operation and the coffee not being brought. See Shutdown problem and Instrumental convergence.