Ethical as well as technological challenges to robotics and AI

"Well, if droids could think, there'd be none of us here, would there?" - Obi-Wan Kenobi Fully autonomous robots with humanlike capabilities might yet be some way away, still the realm largely of science fiction, but lawmakers, legal experts and manufacturers are already engaged in debates about the ethical challenges involved in their production and use, and their legal status, their "legal personality": ultimately, whether it's these machines or human beings who should bear responsibility for their actions. There are questions about whether and how much self-learning machines should be taking independent decisions about moral equivalence involving ethical choices which have traditionally been the preserve of humans. At the extreme, for example, can it be right for a machine to decide to kill an enemy combatant that it has identified without resort to human agency? Or is the robot morally no different from a "brainless" weapon? Is there an inherent difference morally between a "sexbot" and a standard, brainless sex toy?