Sometimes, because of the consequences of otherwise, the order gets reversed
Whatever you meant to say with "Sometimes, because of the consequences of otherwise, the order gets reversed" eludes me as well.
So we don't require, say, minorities or animals to prove they have souls, we just inherently assume they do and make laws around protecting them.
With regards to the topic: Does AI think? I don't know, but I also don't want to act upon knowing if it does (or doesn't for that matter). In other words, I don't care. The answer could go either way, but I'd rather say that I don't know (especially since "thinking" is not defined). That means that I can assume both and consider the consequences using some heuristic to decide which assumption is better given the action I want to justify doing or not doing. If you want me to believe an AI thinks, you have to prove it, if you want to justify an action you may assume whatever you deem most likely. And if you want to know if an AI thinks, then you literally can't assume it does; simple as that.
A lot of people seemingly haven't updated their priors after some of the more interesting results published lately, such as the performance of Google's and OpenAI's models at the 2025 Math Olympiad. Would you say that includes yourself?
If so, what do the models still have to do in order to establish that they are capable of all major forms of reasoning, and under what conditions will you accept such proof?
For that matter I have no opinion on if AI does think or not, I simply don't care. Therefore I also really can't answer your question in what more a model has to do to establish that they are thinking (does being able to use all major forms of reasoning constitute the capability of thought to you?). I can say however, that any such proof would have to be on a case-by-case basis given my current understanding on AI is designed.
Conversely, if the one asserting something doesn't want to define it there is no useful conversation to be had. (as in: AI doesn't think - I won't tell you what I mean by think)
PS: Asking someone to falsify their own assertion doesn't seem a good strategy here.
PPS: Even if everything about the human brain can be emulated, that does not constitute progress for your argument, since now you'd have to assert that AI emulates the human brain perfectly before it is complete. There is no direct connection between "This AI does not think" to "The human brain can be fully emulated". Also the difference between "does not" and "can not" is big enough here that mangling them together is inappropriate.