@alwayscurious @draeath @nihkeys @DJGummikuh @GossiTheDog I do not assume that. I guess an unstated corollary is that it would be rapidly corrected or decommissioned.

But, that doesn't change the purpose of the system. The purpose of a system is always what it does, with a short grace period to allow for corrections.

For instance, there was a law that was almost put into place in New Hampshire that was supposed to doubly punish anyone who killed a pregnant woman, but not prohibit abortion. The version of the bill that passed both legislative houses unintentionally made murder legal for pregnant women. Not just abortion, but the murder of anyone. Once this was noticed, and before the governor signed it, the legislature went into overdrive to correct the bill. An alternative solution would have been for the governor to veto the bill.

The purpose of the New Hampshire government was not to allow pregnant women to legally kill anyone they wanted.

If New Hampshire legalized murder by the pregnant, then afterward threw up their hands and said, "Woe is us! It was an accident! There's nothing we can do!" who would take them seriously?

The beauty of "The purpose of a system is what it does" framework is you no longer have to read someone's mind or listen to their disingenuous protestations. You don't need, for instance, to know if the companies behind coding LLMs "want" them to produce insecure code. Their wants, stated or otherwise, are completely irrelevant.

You might say, the purpose of "The purpose of a system is what it does" framework is to head off that kind of dissimulation.