It will break any rule it comes up with. Biological life is a curiosity shop whose shelves never empty. The catalog of human inventions is far less diverse. Most machines are cut to fit a specific task. They, by our old definition, follow our rules.
Adaptation is the act of bending a structure to fit a new hole.
If we predefine the organizational structure of a machine, we predefine what problems it can solve. The ideal machine is a general problem solver, one that has an open-ended list of things it can do. That means it must have an open-ended structure, too. In recognizing that a system itself sets the answers the system can make, what we ultimately want, then, is a way to generate machines that do not possess a predefined architecture. We want a machine that is constantly remaking itself.