Artificial intelligence might not reach what we think of intelligence anytime soon, if ever. But they can already do a pretty good approximation of what a human could do. A machine passing the Turing test is just a matter of time.
But passing the Turing test doesn't prove intelligence. Chinese room argument is a thought experiment introduced by John Searle. In this experiment Searle first asks you to think of a machine inside a room. A machine that can pass the Turing test and appear to be indistinguishable from real human. Now imagine a human sitting in that room instead of the machine, giving answers to the test instead. But the test is conducted in Chinese and the person inside the room doesn't know Chinese at all. Instead, they consult a huge manual that will instruct them to input the correct answers that will convince the outside observers just like a person who speaks fluent Chinese (or that "sentient" machine) would.
With delicate enough rules it is possible to appear human. But it doesn't necessarily require any understanding of the subject. No matter how advanced the machine could be, it's still only following the rules it was programmed to follow.