The point is whether the system will come up with plans to work against its creators goals, and attempt to carry them out. I think you are arguing that outputting text isn't running a command. But in the test, the AI model is used by a program which takes the model's output and runs it it as a shell command.
Of course, you can deploy the AI system in a limited environment where its outputs don't trigger arbitrary shell commands, or sandbox/monitor it so that it can't access it's oversight mechanism. But people do already deploy their AI agents with access to the shell. in unsandboxed environments that don't have any monitoring or oversight. Plus, these evaluations are partially to show how much OpenAI has to worry about sandboxing, monitoring, etc.
Moreover, OpenAI has already talked about using its models to automate portions of AI development. In that setup, presumably the AI model would be called by a program deployed on a server with access to the shell, ability to run commands, access to GPUs, etc. It seems pretty important to ensure it robustly does what it's creators intend in that case.