Without reading the paper it seems from the tweets that the results are overstated. Academics need to make their results sound more impressive and less trivial and so the choice of wording reflects that. The property that optimal agents seek is not "power", which is quite a general term - it looks more like "agency" i.e. a more specific form of power. But "Optimal agents seek agency" won't win any future grants.
Maybe you should read the paper, and/or the reviewer threads (as we discussed the nomenclature, and eventually agreed that "power" was accurate). We straightforwardly formalize a mainstream definition of power and show how it's more intuitive than the current standard measurement (information-theoretic empowerment).
