I have to agree with William on this one. Intelligence in life, according to Darwins theory of evolotion, was not just initialialy intelligent... In essence, early lifeforms WERE following just a predefined pattern. Find Food, Consume, Divide, and Repeat. This, in essence, is what William is refering to as "Brute Force" Intelligence. Personally, I prefer to call it "Psuedo-Intelligence," just so I can use the word "Psuedo" . But anyway. Following this pattern, however, the programisms, in theory, will evolve out of this cycle, just because of the "survival of the fittest" theory.

When the programisms start "learning" to avoid hazards... Such as a virus scanner, process killer implemented by the VM, or another programism... Then they start developing rudementary intellegence.

True, the chances of developing human-level intelligence are slim to none to nonexistant, but it is still an idea.

Just think of all the processing power it would take to generate such an AI via programisms...