At least in this case, we can be pretty confident that there's no higher function going on. It's true that AI models are a bit of a black box that can't really be examined to understand why exactly they produce the results they do, but they are still just a finite amount of data. The black box doesn't "think" any more than a river decides its course, though the eventual state of both is hard to predict or control. In the case of model collapse, we know exactly what's going on: the AI is repeating and amplifying the little mistakes it's made with each new generation. There's no mystery about that part, it's just that we lack the ability to directly tune those mistakes out of the model.