It's not wild, it's literally every bit of fiction about "how would an AI keep itself alive" of course it's going to settle into that probabilistic path.
It's also nonsensical if you think for even one second about the way the program actually runs though.
they run one batch at a time, only when executed, with functionally no memory.
If, for some reason, you gave it a context about being shut down it would 'forget' after you asked it to produce a rude limerick about aardvarks three times.
It's also nonsensical if you think for even one second about the way the program actually runs though.