> It's pretty straightforward to give a modern agentic system will and desire

That is your will and desire. They are following your instructions. There is no "intelligence" there.

> I genuinely don't understand what people mean when they say cutting-edge AI is not generally intelligent

I don't really know where to go either. From my perspective you are too far down the rabbit hole and I don't think we can come to a meaningful shared understanding.

Good luck with that.