[Nate the Great]

Again I reinterate: Please no II! II is Roman for two! I'm not a two! If you can't say "Nate," use "NTG."

1) Well, robots today don't count as self-aware OR living because I'd define those two terms as:
Self-aware: Posessing the knowledge of who and what you are, what you can and can't do (in general), and knowing what is required to stay functional.
Living: Experiencing a life. "Life" being defined as a state of experience and growth, influencing other lives.
2) Well, to use a human analogy (and what else do we have, really?), we already influence how each other thinks. Media, hackneyed saying, fivers, etc. are all used in an attempt to make each other "wear our shoes," for lack of a better term. If there really are computers that satisfy 1), then we have the right to influence their thoughts, and they'd have the right to influence ours.
3) Okay, put on your explorer hats and prepare to dash out of the Temple of Doom, dudes and dudettes! Uh, who would take away our "right" to create thinking robots? After all, if we can create machines capable of genuine thought, that'd be the final nail in the coffin of evolution. God would be superfluous. Souls wouldn't exist. After all, if mechanical machines can think, then so can organic machines, and we're just the result of millions of years of trial and error by random forces trying to slap a thinking machine together.