Are Emergent Abilities of LLMs a Mirage?

Metric-choice argument: Argues "emergence" is often an artifact of using discontinuous metrics (like exact match) rather than smooth ones (like log-probability).

Metric substitution: When re-analyzing with continuous metrics, many "emergent" capabilities appear smoothly with scale.

Research methodology: Cautions the field against interpreting metric-choice artifacts as fundamental phase transitions.

Best Paper at NeurIPS 2023: Influential paper that sparked extensive debate about what "emergence" really means in LLMs.