Most cephalopods and, I think, all octopoda are semelparous--they procreate once, and then usually die not longer after. I wonder if this is their Great Filter, preventing the emergence of more cooperative, social behaviors among themselves that could potentially put them on the path humans found themselves on.

Certainly I think octopus and squid, along with covids and some other groups, show that intelligence is rather easy to come by so long as it's adaptive. Human-level intelligence is probably only adaptive given other factors that preceded leaps in our intelligence. For example, I bet nascent (but theretofore unseen) altruism and culture emerged and created an ecological environment into which our intelligence could profitably expand, after which the process probably accelerated and became more dynamic.