Have you seen Charles Stross' Saturn's Children (which is all about this issue).
In that and the excellent sequel (Neptune's Brood), robots cognition was based upon an analysis of human cognition (but not on uploads), and thus these robots were essentially human minds in artificial bodies.
However, I can also imagine robots that are not based on human cognition, but are merely able to brute force language understanding and mobility/physical environment understanding through massive processing. Such a being would not have any self consciousness or emotions. I would not consider robots like this to be sentient beings and could definitely see using something like Asimov's 3 laws being used for them.
no subject
In that and the excellent sequel (Neptune's Brood), robots cognition was based upon an analysis of human cognition (but not on uploads), and thus these robots were essentially human minds in artificial bodies.
However, I can also imagine robots that are not based on human cognition, but are merely able to brute force language understanding and mobility/physical environment understanding through massive processing. Such a being would not have any self consciousness or emotions. I would not consider robots like this to be sentient beings and could definitely see using something like Asimov's 3 laws being used for them.