While robotics and AI research is taking massive strides forward, our social development hasn't really kept up with them. We may very well have sentient robots in a few decades, but is our society prepared to deal with that possibility? For starters, what role would robots play? Would they be considered as mindless servants, inferior slaves who (which?!) exist only to serve our needs? Would they be like animals, given some rights, but clearly not as many as humans?

With huge leaps taking place in the world of artificial intelligence (AI), right now, experts have started asking questions about the new forms of protection we might need against the formidable smarts and potential dangers of computers and robots of the near future. But do robots need protection from us too? As the'minds' of machines evolve ever closer to something that's hard to tell apart from human intelligence, new generations of technology may need to be afforded the kinds of moral and legal protections we usually think of as'human' rights, says mathematician Marcus du Sautoy from the University of Oxford in the UK. Du Sautoy thinks that once the sophistication of computer thinking reaches a level basically akin to human consciousness, it's our duty to look after the welfare of machines, much as we do that of people. "It's getting to a point where we might be able to say this thing has a sense of itself, and maybe there is a threshold moment where suddenly this consciousness emerges," du Sautoy told media at the Hays Festival in Hay-on-Wye, Wales this week.