I think there's a point as you increase the comolexity of the "information processing" system where you get emergent intelligence.

A mechanism that makes a rotor go one way or the other as a function of the time derivative of a variable would not qualify as such.

Now, if you have a trillion such mecanisms atuned and feeding one anothers inputs in a network... Well you just got yourself a brain and then we can start talking about intelligence.