They think. It's a matter of semantics of course, but the processing of ideas is thinking and AI does that.
Why do you keep strawmanning? I never said I'm confident AIs will have consciousness. I'm saying we can't know, but there's no reason to think they won't. How are you so confident they never will have consciousness since we don't actually know what consciousness is?
What else is a brain but a biological machine? Do you think it has magic or something else that differentiates it from any other machine? Getting stuck on semantics is pointless - the source of a machine is irrelevant to this discussion.
This entire discussion is based on assumptions, as is your opinion that a brain is somehow a special construct that can't ever be emulated.
The ultimate fact that we don't know what consciousness actually is, nor can we prove an entity has it or doesn't (except for our own mind) means that it's kind of a stupid thing to argue about. You can believe whatever you want. I don't really care if you're wrong.