[shard972]

Seems like it could go either way, its not like the bots themselves need the rights or become legal entities beyond a weapon.

Now maybe this weapon fires by you telling it to shoot that guy over there, or it's programmed to shoot anyone who enters through that door over there, but in the end it's still a weapon under control and responsibility of the owner.

[discoball]

What you describe is not Autonomous AI that is driven by a dynamic mission, as the military AI will be. An AI killer bot can be developed that not only tries to achieve the goal specified by the mission but also alter the mission as needed to achieve a higher level goal, and the higher you go up in the goal specification the more autonomy you're giving to the machine.