It's a literal truth that predicting the next token one at a time does not preclude intelligence on the other side of the decode function. Deal with it.
To be honest, if this is intelligence, then it's really boring. We can't even simulate the brain of a 1000 neuron nematode. You're telling me we can't even run nematode.exe but somehow we have already created intelligence?
Comparing either the Wright Brothers first successful flight (1903) or even an F22 Raptor (released in 2005) to a Sparrow:
"If this is flight, it's really boring. We can't even build a mechanical sparrow that can lay eggs and catch flies. You're telling me we can't run sparrow.exe but we've created flight?"
We didn't build something that flies by flapping its wings until 2010. We'd been building functional airplanes for more than 100 years before we were able to build something that worked in a (more primitive, but) similar way to how a sparrow flies.
I'm sorry that modern machine intelligence is so boring to you.
It isn't boring to me, I'm fascinated both by the ways I'm still far more capable than trillion parameter LLMs, and also by the ways they are already far more capable than I am.
FWIW, while I am not bored by nascent machine intelligence, I am bored by predictable human reactions to it: greed, exploitation, hubris, etc.
You evaded any understanding of my point — mistaking the API for the implementation is like seeing a manuscript beside a typewriter and concluding the typewriter wrote it. You wouldn’t do that; why make the same category error here?