Hacking meme aside, lots of computer scientists are overextending their domain expertise into an area that has been well studied by philosophy and biology. It isn't surprising the software is good and the philosophy looks like outsider art.

Here are some relevant pointers to connect this discussion to the existing philosophy on the subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergentism

Basically there's a lot of cases where some properties arise from sets of a thing, which would otherwise not be present in a single or few things.

One classic example is that a single molecule or drop of water does not express fluid mechanics.

And of course, a bit more basic would be materialism, but maybe you are one of the lucky hundreds:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism