The emergent abilities of LLMs have been highly publicized — could we harness the unpredictability for the greater good, or are we unleashing something into the world that we can’t control? Or, more importantly, are LLMs' emergent abilities even real? Ron Green and Numa Dhamani will engage in a discussion of whether the emergent abilities of LLMs are real or if they are a mirage. They will explain emergence as a general concept, how they’re seen in LLMs, or if they’re a fact or illusion. With healthy skepticism, they will discuss explanations for this mysterious AI.