The article will be more accurate if evolution was not treated as a volitional choice.
The passive voice is consistently used throughout ("have become hypermutators", "picked up early mutations in") and so on. The last paragraph explicitly calls out the stochastic nature of mutations and the role of selective pressures.
The only part struck me as even vaguely "volitional" is "they are each finding their own path toward the same goal of optimal fitness" , and even that is a far cry from "Giraffes evolved long necks so they could eat leaves at the tops of trees".
In the absence of such experiment, both options are purely speculative (by definition).
BTW, is your statement above a result of volitional choice, or non-volitional choice? How do you know? :)
Getting back to the original point, people, including me, will say things like "this shopping cart wants to pull to the right" knowing full well that the shopping card has no desires at all. It is a useful metaphor that confuses nobody.