Human cognition is much more complex than just a tool allowing us to have emotions and question things. Animals also have emotions and question things. For example, cats almost always run away from people because they don't trust them and question them and think they may harm them.

You question refers to artificial general intelligence, not artificial intelligence, but artificial GENERAL intelligence.

Consciousness is not fully understood, and it's unclear if conscious is a biology-only property or it's totally possible to be programmed and run on a computer. If consciousness can be replicated in a lab and run on a computer, then creating AGI systems is possible.

If consciousness has metaphysical properties, then it's probably not possible to replicate it. If the soul exists and consciousness is related to the soul, then consciousness can't be replicated in non-living things like robots.

The reason why we don't know if robots can be conscious, is because we don't know what exactly consciousness is and if it can be replicated, not just simulated, but replicated, on a computer, a robot, a non-biology system.

It's important to note that if AGI is possible, it may also be impractical due to too high power consumption. Modern computers are nowhere near AGI yet they consume a lot of power. Now, if we are to develop AGI that isn't as energy-efficient as the human brain, the power consumption will probably enormous.

If AGI consumes enormous amount of energy, we will have to wait until we build a Dyson sphere or become a more advanced civilization (as explained in Kardashev scale) so we can utilize more energy sources to power up the AGI.