The common understanding of what means the term: "intelligent life" appears wrongly to be measured by reference to human beings and is applied to human beings, but that cannot be logical since human beings clearly cannot be a form of "intelligence" life, for the following reasons:
What form of allegedly intelligent life would:
Carry on practices actively destroying its own environment, with reference to the climate emergency e.g. continue to produce carbon-emissions, while at the same time, continue to destroy trees that are a major means to trap carbon.
Human-caused world-wide destruction of trees:
https://www.livescience.com/52070-global-tree-census-human-impacts.html
Tree-destruction human "business as usual" - Undeniably lovely French-built replica of the U.S. war of independence ship Hermione sailing ship, taking 2,000 oak trees. The planet can no longer sustain such continued abuse of its natural resources:
https://www.dw.com/en/french-replica-of-us-war-of-independence-ship-hermione-sets-sail-to-retrace-historic-atlantic-voyage/a-18391938
Human beings espouse "science" as a form of undeniable knowledge, yet while denying, without any logic, the mainstream-science on the climate emergency.
More than 11,000 scientists declare a Global Climate Emergency November 5, 2019:
https://www.sciencealert.com/a-monumental-alliance-of-world-scientists-declare-a-climate-emergency
Time lapse video of decline of Arctic sea ice:
https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/155/video-annual-arctic-sea-ice-minimum-1979-2020-with-area-graph/