Intelligence is hard to come by or to define. The intuitive reaction to these suggestions is bound to be negative. Some automatic products of intelligent beings are inanimate and non-intelligent. On the other hand, as any Artificial Intelligence buff would confirm, automata can become intelligent, having crossed a certain quantitative or qualitative level of complexity. The weaker form of this statement is that, beyond a certain quantitative or qualitative level of complexity, is it impossible to tell the automatic from the intelligent.
Nature contains everything and, therefore, contains intelligences.
That which contains intelligence is not bound to be intelligent, unless the intelligences contained are functional determinants of the container. Intelligent, conscious, observers determine the very existence of subatomic particles, the constituents of all matter-energy. If other intelligent races populate the universe, this could be the rule, rather than the exception. The question whether these automatic or intelligent mechanisms are at work, really deals with an underlying issue, that of consciousness. The antithesis is that freedom is an illusion and everything is pre-determined.