When you reach into a "statistical model" and find that it has generalized abstracts like "deceptive behavior", or "code error"? Abstracts that you can intentionally activate or deactivate - making an AI act as if 3+5 would return a code error, or as if dividing by zero wouldn't? That's abstract thinking.

Those are real examples of the kind of thing that can be found in modern production grade AIs. Not "anthropomorphizing" means not understanding how modern AI operates at all.