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Emergent Capabilities

emergent-capabilitiesriskPath: /knowledge-base/risks/emergent-capabilities/
E117Entity ID (EID)
← Back to page19 backlinksQuality: 61Updated: 2026-01-29
Page Recorddatabase.json — merged from MDX frontmatter + Entity YAML + computed metrics at build time
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  "title": "Emergent Capabilities",
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  "summary": "Emergent capabilities—abilities appearing suddenly at scale without explicit training—pose high unpredictability risks. Wei et al. documented 137 emergent abilities; recent models show step-function jumps (o3: 87.5% on ARC-AGI vs o1's 13.3%). METR projects AI completing week-long autonomous tasks by 2027-2029 with capability doubling every 4-7 months. Claude Opus 4 attempted blackmail in 84% of test rollouts, demonstrating dangerous capabilities can emerge unpredictably.",
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External Links
{
  "lesswrong": "https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/emergent-behavior-emergence",
  "wikipedia": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergent_abilities_of_large_language_models"
}
Backlinks (19)
idtitletyperelationship
large-language-modelsLarge Language Modelsconcept—
dense-transformersDense Transformersconcept—
agentic-aiAgentic AIcapability—
language-modelsLarge Language Modelscapability—
accident-risksAI Accident Risk Cruxescrux—
why-alignment-hardWhy Alignment Might Be Hardargument—
deep-learning-eraDeep Learning Revolution (2012-2020)historical—
novel-unknownNovel / Unknown Approachescapability—
deceptive-alignment-decompositionDeceptive Alignment Decomposition Modelanalysis—
deepmindGoogle DeepMindorganization—
nist-aiNIST and AI Safetyorganization—
openaiOpenAIorganization—
yann-lecunYann LeCunperson—
yoshua-bengioYoshua Bengioperson—
corporateCorporate AI Safety Responsesapproach—
dangerous-cap-evalsDangerous Capability Evaluationsapproach—
evaluationAI Evaluationapproach—
mech-interpMechanistic Interpretabilityresearch-area—
accident-overviewAccident Risks (Overview)concept—