Can you explain emergence then please? Because the way you're using it, and the way people tend to use it to present this argument is as a stand in for magic and another way of saying "if we don't understand it, then anything is possible, man!".
The same with models. On low level there are weights, gradients, matrices. But move up and (wow!) It's nothing like it. It's coherent text or actions. Commands and responses. Put together and you have image recognition and generation from description. It's something new with it's own laws and properties. Just a bit up and we'll get coherent behavior and social creatures. For them we need 'generic' component. It's like soul for life. And LLMs could be it. At least they are the best candidates today.