Probably. I doubt it's possible to look at a piece of code and evaluate whether it's worth feeding it the equivalent of ten years of basic education. If we ever write a program that exhibits "creativity, or desire, or whatever you want to call it" on a basic level after however many months the researcher can afford to run it for, then it'll suddenly get a lot of funding and time and potential for growth.

For all we know, we already have the Algorithm and all we need to do is run it for years on the best computer available "just to see what happens".