They do think. Have you tried Gemini Pro? It even provides you with a steam of consciousness prior to answering your prompt. So does Qwen 3.6 when used locally. It's also not a database, it's a neural network with digital synapses - not unlike our own brains. The difference is they are digital, and we are biological.
No one is selling models, they're selling processing time on the servers that host the models. You can download a model and use your own hardware for free.
I don't own any shares of any company. I do have a Master's degree in Computer Science with a major of Artificial Intelligence, though.
Piracy would be selling someone else's work, and that's not happening. That's like saying an artist is pirating all the content they've watched to inspire turn when they make anything. Nothing is being sold, other than time on a server, and you don't need to pay that to use AI. It's completely free if you host it locally, which I do.