SvennoJ on 11 July 2013
Yes.
Fetus's have rights, animal species have rights, frozen piece of rock has rights (Antartica), robots will get rights too.
Sentient computer programs won't begin with robots though. And why assume that robots will have individual minds, a hive mind scenario might be more plausible. Humans never had the benefit of always online, with robots that will be natural. So will skynet get rights?
We can already make programs that can learn.
http://venturebeat.com/2012/12/18/numenta-grok/
http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/513696/deep-learning/
A sentient program will first be made using the cloud.
