Whether you can be "curious while starving" might or might not be possible, but it is irrelevant to the point.

For starters, because the claim argued is that you can have motivation (say, through curiocity) even without a survival instinct.

And it's perfectly possible to have no survival instinct and yet not to be starting anyway. It's enough that you have access to food or are fed, to avoid starvation. So lack of survival instict is not the same as starvation.

If we substitite "starvation" for "access to electricity" (as AGIs don't eat food), as long as an AGI is provided by electricity by us, even if it has no survival instict, can still have curiosity, and thus motivation.