Why should facility with language be the foundation of general intelligence? Any more than cat recognition is? I would argue that it's the other way around - in living things, development of language is emergent from intelligence, not a prerequisite for it. That desired behaviour 'emerges' from specialised networks trained for a specific purpose should not be too surprising, but it doesn't automatically imply that any other behaviour will appear. I think in the case of ChatGPT, we just didn't really know what to expect; we are therefore amazed by the things it can do, whereas with time and greater understanding perhaps we will come to realise that this is what language models are - and perhaps in the process understand our own minds more deeply.

My feeling is that the crucial difference between us and the machines right now is that our software runs on the network, whereas ChatGPT et al use the network as part of their operation, as if the network is some sort of coprocessor. I don't think we'll see "true" AGI until there is nothing but the network receiving inputs and feeding back into itself endlessly, i.e. introspecting - thinking about thinking about thinking, per Douglas Hofstadter. I have no basis for this assertion beyond intuition though.