It depends on how you define intelligence. There's a straightforward functional definition: if a system can solve a range of problems that require complex reasoning and it meets objective standards of success across multiple disciplines, then that system is intelligent.

Search algorithms used to be considered a part of AI research. The whole point of the field, from the Turing test onward, has been that mimicry is in some sense all you need. Maybe there's a coherent philosophical position where intelligence is defined as some intrinsic property possessed by conscious agents, but I find it remarkably hard to come up with a precise definition along those lines.