Once they figure out how to fingerprint your consciousness with all your memories onto a hard-drive, they just transfer it to a robot body when you die. Human intelligence has a limit, the smartest scientists in the world can barely understand quantum mechanics. In order for human intelligence to improve, you have to upgrade the hardware (brain). First they use supercomputers to figure things out, then they will start putting computers in our brains (cyborgs), the final step is completely becoming a computer. But what do the robots evolve into after that?
Although animé may not be your cup of tea (guessing, not sure), you should definitely check out the movies/tv shows called
Ghost in the Shell. They are dealing with exactly what you are describing. Some episodes are really digging deep into thinking what it means to simply "be".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_in_the_shellHmm.. Not on netflix as of right now.