This comment is my patch for "why will the AI actually shut down," but I didn't read your comment as trying to circumvent the shut-down procedure but rather the utility function itself (from the words "achieving the upper bound"), so I (erroneously) didn't consider it applicable at the time. But, yes, the patch is needed so that the AI doesn't consider the shutdown function an ordinary bit of code that it can modify.

Mmph. I'm more interested in seeing how far I can push this before my AI idea gets binned (and I am pretty sure it will.)