The idea that any situation or sensory input can be broken down into a sequence of tokens, and that action choice can be characterized by predicting a subsequent sequence of tokens in the same space, may well bear fruit.

But I think that a lot of people also buy into the idea that "text and image data from the web, and from historical chats, is the right/only way to generate the data set required," and it's a dangerous trap to fall into.

What do you think the correct, or at least a more likely tree is?

its certainly currently useful and also generally intelligent, right?

It's definitely useful.

It can answer specialized PhD level questions correctly, yet cannot perform tasks that an average 10 year old could. I don't consider that generally intelligent.

but it can perform all kinds of tasks. generally intelligent isn't universally intelligent, is it?

useful, sure. like a calculator for text. intelligent? no, and neither is a calculator

a question, especially this one, can't really be "not even wrong"