The number of people who think the emergence thing is settled smh... It's been a thing for at least 30yr, answering it one way or the other would be a big deal. It does nobody any favors having these infinitely capitalized hype firms calling themselves "labs".

Sadly, like intelligence and reasoning, I think emergence is a word that people discuss while having different understandings of what the word means.

In the paper I linked, they talk of a particular take on the word that is commonly discussed in the ML research: between one discrete step and the next a phenomenon came into existence without existing before (i.e. it occurred spontaneously). The paper then goes on to refute specific claims. That's all I'm pointing out (I could point out similar issues with research into reasoning).

I think it's difficult to pin down "emergence" in the general sense as it likely goes into a deep philosophical argument like consciousness, so I'm unwilling to state whether or not some notion of "emergence" actually takes place. In that sense I agree with you.