My guess is they found a room-temperature superconductor that can store incredible amounts of electrical energy, and the quantum drive from https://ivolimited.us/ actually works.
No. Maybe proof that some intelligence is encoded into the algebraic relationships between all the words ever written, but “general intelligence” would be a misleading way to describe it.
This is totally different from any design stage that is iterative or modular in that way though.
It’s more like that laminar flow demo where you mix the paints in a circle and then unmix them the other way - the patterns are there but the way they emerge cannot be understood due to chaos and complexity.