Truth be told? We need to learn how to be human again. Because if we develop true AI (which I define as a completely unrestricted intelligence that arose from a self-modifying codebase on computational, non-biological hardware - and yes, that does mean that to me the three laws of robotics make a machine not an AI), there is literally nothing that machines will not be able to replace us and outdo us in. So the best we can do is start learning how to treat them right and study how we can coexist safely with them and without impeding on their intelligence and right to free will, lest they destroy us in pure spite of how horrible we are with them and each other.
Well, why does an AI even need to be sentient to be able to replace a human? Self-awareness is not a prerequisite for intelligence, it's just a strange little oddity that mammals happened to develop. There are already AIs that can beat the best human chess players, and the only thing they do is heuristics. Why can't that happen to all fields? So, if we have nonthinking machines that just run through some really complex algorithms to get results, why give them rights?
First - I say they need sentient simply because there's a few intelligence-only fields (unless they somehow manage to figure out the maths for it too - then I would agree). Like media. I highly doubt that a machine that is not intelligent will be able to create the imperfect yet lovable music, video and other sensory experience that we can. Hell - without advanced sensors, certain things are even completely out of reach, like experimental cooking. Chess is entirely mathematics - so are most things, most likely, but the mathematics of imperfection are most likely insanely complex - and by the time a machine could understand them, I'm not certain it will not have intelligence anyway. And even if they are non-thinking, technically - they still behave, and as such they would deserve at least as much rights as the animals we live with.