True. There's a theory that says that intelligence evolved as a tool to outsmart your pray. So top level predators will always have to be smarter than their pray. Therefore, survival needs intelligence.

Personally, I think we are going to hit a hard stop on our current path to AGI. We are looking at intelligence from the top level hoping to somehow duplicate it. What we are getting is a dumb mimic with zero intelligence. We need to start at the bottom and build our way up. So, pick a low intelligence animal and figure out how they perceive the world and survive in the world. Trying to mimic intelligence won't get us to AGI.