Indeed, I was surprised by the article's assumption that "emergence" is about a sudden jump in ability.
I work in AI and ML but my academic background is in the philosophy of mind. When people talk about "emergence" w/r/t AI I assume they're speculating about how consciousness might be an emergent property of a neural network, in the same way some people speculate that our minds are emergent properties of our brains. I think that speculation is foolish, but that is beside the point. It has nothing to do with a sudden jump in abilities, per se.
I work in AI and ML but my academic background is in the philosophy of mind. When people talk about "emergence" w/r/t AI I assume they're speculating about how consciousness might be an emergent property of a neural network, in the same way some people speculate that our minds are emergent properties of our brains. I think that speculation is foolish, but that is beside the point. It has nothing to do with a sudden jump in abilities, per se.