Comment by UniverseHacker

I disagree- presumably if an algorithm or hardware is optimized for a certain class of problem it really is good at it and always will be- which is still useful if you are actually using it for that. It’s just “studying for the test”- something I would expect to happen even if it is a bit misleading.

VW cheated such that the low emissions were only active during the test- it’s not that it was optimized for low emissions under the conditions they test for, but that you could not get those low emissions under any conditions in the real world. That's "cheating on the test" not "studying for the test."