I should apologize ahead of time as this is merely speculation, and quite possibly could be considered pompous theorizing to the viewers here. These are some recent thoughts I'd like to share.
I should like to remind myself as often as I can of another one of the human ape's self-righteous errors; namely, thinking that our self-consciousness is the standard, the pinnacle, even, of "intelligence."
Why is it that all of these elaborate theories of "extra-terrestrial life" automatically assume that their potential self-conscious awareness and intelligence would be akin to ours? One must humble this view by accepting that this is a simple anthropocentric slant on the chaos (cosmos.)
We must remember that we function through interpretation and representation, yes, but just because that is so does not mean that symbols and tools are the end-all of intelligence-potential. Blind evolutionary forces, mere chance, just had this work out.
We are not special, our "self-model of the world" (representations) is nothing but a roll of the dice, a potential, and certainly not an end-point of "greatness."