Although 14 of our chosen tasks were previ-
ously considered emergent, when controlling for
in-context learning, both directly and as triggered
through instruction tuning, we found that only two
tasks displayed emergence, one which indicates
formal linguistic abilities (nonsense words gram-
mar) and the other which indicates recall (hindu
knowledge). Ultimately, this absence of evidence
for emergence represents a significant step towards
instilling trust in language models and leveraging
their abilities with confidence, as it is indicative
of the complete lack of latent hazardous abilities
in LLMs, in addition to being controllable by the
user. By contributing to a deeper understanding of
these models’ behaviour and limitations, we help
to demystify the LLMs in the public and remove
the related safety concerns.
AreEmergentAbilitiesinLarge Language Models just In-Context