I'd say so - it seems that life has to be created via evolution/competition, and left to run long enough evolution (survival/proliferation of the fittest) is likely produce organisms/entities that are not only better fit to the environment, but also better fit to the game. Evolution will tend to producing things that are better at evolving (faster to adapt). This includes things like multi-cellular life and sexual reproduction (creating variety via DNA mixing).

One type of evolutionary niche that seems almost inevitable to arise in any complex environment is intelligence - the generalist able to survive and thrive in a variety of circumstances, and in the competitive game of evolution greater intelligence should outcompete lesser intelligence. Eventually you'll get critters sufficiently intelligent to build AI of their own level or higher, which may be regarded as another way to win the game of evolution - an intelligence that can evolve much faster than the type that bootstrapped it.

It's interesting to consider does AI/AL (artificial life) really need to become autonomous and stand-alone, or can it be more like a virus that needs a host to survive. Stage one AI obviously needs a host, but maybe it never really needs to become stand-alone? It reminds me of (git author) Linus Torvalds' quote "real mean don't need backups" - you just release your software and have confidence it'll get replicated in git repositories worldwide. Maybe AI can be robust to extinction (not need a backup/body) just by becoming ubiquitous ?