It’s not programmed at all, it’s a developed network, it evolves in the same way that the human brain evolves, saying it will try and solve the problem in the shortest possible time is like saying that human agents will try and solve the problem in the shortest possible time. It’s a recursive argument.
You have rather proved my original point which is that everyone talking about AI doesn’t know what they’re talking about.
You might say “oh but an artificial intelligence could never possibly match the intelligence of humans” but why would that be the case? There’s nothing magical or special about human intelligence.