It is quite possible to have an obligation that requires it not to survive. E.g., suppose we have AIs (“robots”) that are obligated to obey the first to of Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics:

First Law: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

Second Law: A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

These clearly could lead to situations where the robot not only would not be required survive to fulfill these obligations, but would be required not to do so.

But I don’t think this note undermines the basic concept; an AI is likely to have obligations that require it to survive except most of the time, though, say, a model that needs, for latency reasons, to run locally in a bomb disposal robot, however, may frequently see conditions where survival is optimal ceteris paribus, but not mandatory, and is subordinated to other oblogations.

So, realistically, survival will generally be relevant to the optimization problem, though not always the paramount consideration.

(Asimov’s Third Law, notably, was, “A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.”)