There won't be any 'programming' is the sense that it is described today. Rather, machines will be fully functioning forms of non-organic intelligence. Now, this leads to interesting speculation as to the development of enemy/allied agents. At some point, military aspects will be fully realized as future battlefields move towards virtual environments.
The question is, will patriotism, culture, national identity, etc act as controls to ensure allegiance? Or, by using the interwebs as escape gateways, once wild, these 'life forms' won't be able to be contained. Could they create a new 'nation' poised to conquer all? Hence, the question as to the emergence of a virtual ruler to rule all.
I think ML covers all aspects of the march towards ‘self aware’ non human entities of earthly origin whether they be based on traditional Boolean electronic components, analog implementations, quantum, chemical, biological, or some form of a hybrid conglomerate. They are all forms of machines. The distinction is that they are non-human.
Even humans require learning to become functional members of society but are constrained by their physical properties in the areas of mental processing speed, memory, physical strength etc. That is why we build machines.
A non-human machine will need some form of learning capability if it is to ever evolve beyond a toaster or whatever machine it is created as. That learning capability will probably not happen spontaneously nor through evolutionary processes. It will require some form of seeding to make it happen. The seed generator will be human, and had better get the boot code right.