 This is a question not just for scientists and engineers; it is also a question for philosophers. This is so for two reasons. One, research and development designed to validate an affirmative answer must include philosophy – for reasons rooted in earlier parts of the present entry. (E.g., philosophy is the place to turn to for robust formalisms to model human propositional attitudes in machine terms.) Two, philosophers might well be able to provide arguments that answer the cornerstone question now, definitively. If a version of either of the three arguments against “Strong” AI alluded to above (Searle’s CRA; the Gödelian attack; the Dreyfus argument) are sound, then of course AI will not manage to produce machines having the mental powers of persons. No doubt the future holds not only ever-smarter machines, but new arguments pro and con on the question of whether this progress can reach the human level that Descartes declared to be unreachable. 