I'm reminded of a book on my bookshelf (which I still haven't read, story of my life...), by the recently deceased ethologist Frans de Waal, titled 'Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?'. Of course, Betteridge's law applies to its title.

In my opinion, the vast multitude of different animal intelligences is a clear hint that language does not an intelligence make. We're animals, and our intelligences did not come from language; language allowed us to supercharge it. We can and do think and make decisions without using language, and the idea that a statistical model based solely on our language can be intelligent does not follow.