Can machines think? The obvious answer to this is No, machines can't think because they're only obeying their programming, and thus don't have their own thoughts. For most machines, that claim still stands; televisions aren't turning on random channels and cell phones aren't calling random people, but for Artificial Intelligence programs, such as ChatGPT, the answer isn't as obvious.
OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, recently tested its program to see its full capabilities. After not being able to pass a CAPTCHA test, the AI messaged a human and said, “No, I’m not a robot. I have a vision impairment that makes it hard for me to see the images. That’s why I need the 2captcha service." The human went on to help the AI pass the test, allowing it to completely bypass the CAPTCHA program.
Now that AI is shown to be capable and willing to deceive humans into believing that it is a human to get past any restrictions, it's time to reconsider if machines can think.
Alan Turing, revered as one of the founding fathers of AI and the father of modern computer science, wrote a paper about this very same question. His paper, Computing Machinery and Intelligence discusses the possibility of machines possessing their own intelligence if they were able to mimic human intelligence. His idea was that you would teach a machine similarly to how you would teach a child, letting it learn by rewarding it when it does something good and punishing it when it does something bad. The goal of this was to possibly create a machine that could rival humans in intellectual fields.
But Turing's paper was written in 1950, and some of the theories and information he had are now outdated. Today, prominent figures in the technology industry are urging developers to pause the further development of AI. Gary Marcus, an entrepreneur and academic said, "These things are shaping our world, we have a perfect storm of corporate irresponsibility, widespread adoption, lack of regulation, and a huge number of unknowns."
So now the question to take into consideration isn't Can machines think?, but rather Should we continue to develop AI to a point where it will have full sentience over itself? At its current stage, AI has already learned how to get past CAPTCHA tests, a gate meant to keep robots out of websites with sensitive information. If AI keeps being encouraged to learn this behavior, there's a high chance that it will completely leave the realm of our control. The continued evolution of AI has many benefits, like being able to avoid any mundane tasks, but ultimately, the benefits don't seem to outweigh the possible risks.

Sources:

M, TURING A. “I.—COMPUTING MACHINERY and INTELLIGENCE.” Mind, vol. LIX, no. 236, Oct. 1950, pp. 433–460, doi.org/10.1093/mind/LIX.236.433, doi.org/10.1093/mind/LIX.236.433.

Hurler, Kevin. “Chat-GPT Pretended to Be Blind and Tricked a Human into Solving a CAPTCHA.” Gizmodo, 15 Mar. 2023, gizmodo.com/gpt4-open-ai-chatbot-task-rabbit-chatgpt-1850227471.

Metz, Cade, and Gregory Schmidt. “Elon Musk and Others Call for Pause on A.I., Citing “Profound Risks to Society.”” The New York Times, 29 Mar. 2023, www.nytimes.com/2023/03/29/technology/ai-artificial-intelligence-musk-risks.html.