To people who really understand them and are grounded, I think you're right. There has been a lot of hype among people who don't understand them as much, a lot of hype among the public, and a lot of schlock about "superintelligence" and "hard takeoff" etc. among smart but un-grounded people.
The latter kind of fear mongering hype has been exploited by companies like ClosedAI in a bid for regulatory capture.
A little humility would do us good regardless, because we don't know what intelligence is and what consciousness is, we can't truly define it nor do we understand what makes humans conscious and sentient/sapient.
Categorically ruling out intelligence because "it's just a token predictor" puts us at the opposite of the spectrum, and that's not necessarily a better place to be.
The latter kind of fear mongering hype has been exploited by companies like ClosedAI in a bid for regulatory capture.