> A recent analysis by the psychologist Clara Colombatto, the philosopher Jonathan Birch and the neuroscientist Stephen Fleming found that exposure to these systems leads to an increase in attributions of mental capacities to them.

Is this not (weak) evidence that the do have mental capacities? It's a subjective question so there is literally no better way to answer it than ask a lot of people and go with what most of them think. Confidence going up with exposure is exactly what you expect from something that's clearly true.