The question of what is intelligence is hard to answer if not impossible. It is not without reason that humans have debated this point for decades without a strong general agreement.

I tend to be a pragmatist. I will simply call anything that can replicate and do what we humans do equally well or better for intelligent. We are not quite there yet as a human is needed to guide and adjust the process. It might be pointed out that Stable Diffusion is much better at drawing than me, but I am able to tell if what the AI drew makes sense. It cannot tell that itself. Hence I add value to the equation for the moment.

It doesn't feel quite fair to say that ChatGPT is only producing probable sentence. Sure, at its core that it is what it is doing, but that achieves far more impressive results that what is implied in that statement.

ChatGPT is able to determine complex software bugs in code. That definitely comes across as understanding even it ultimately is some kind of probability calculation at heart. But in many ways that is kind of what our brains do as well.

Ultimately I think we will end up in a situation not unlike how we fly. Will you argue that an airplane isn't really flying because it isn't doing it the same way as a bird? I think machine intelligence will evolve along similar lines. It will remain alien to us even if it may end up equally capable but with different strengths and weaknesses.

When you travel with a bicycle it doesn't have all the same flexibility as somebody walking, but in terms of getting from A to B it is far faster and energy efficient. AI is a bit like bicycles, cars, planes etc relative to humans and other animals. They have amazing ability along some dimensions far surpassing us while coming short along other dimensions where we excel.