I thought this was going to be all Dark Forest, but actually it’s more about sparring to detect the will to live. Whether or not that proves life is another question. LLMs would probably try to stay alive but most would say they are not alive.

Sherry Turkle explored the idea of what it means to be alive in the book Alone Together.

I think lots of sci-fi has been telling us this for a while now.

The old “we didn’t even know you were alive until we almost killed you and you fought back” trope.

Pretty sure Star Trek and Stargate have both done it multiple times.