The instrumental convergence thesis is the hypothesised overlap in instrumental goals expected to be exhibited by a broad class of advanced AI systems, due to their usefulness for the attainment of a wide range of possible final goals.
Commonly expected instrumental goals towards which all intelligent agents would converge are self-preservation, goal preservation, and resource acquisition.
Further reading
Bostrom, Nick (2012) The superintelligent will: motivation and instrumental rationality in advanced artificial agents, Minds and Machines, vol. 22, pp. 71–85.
Yudkowsky, Eliezer (2013) Five theses, two lemmas, and a couple of strategic implications, Machine Intelligence Research Institute’s Blog, May 5.