Alien robot cognition general I guess? (without transfer of consciousness thing)

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There's something I'm really interested in /sci/.

Imagine, there's a self-sustaining civilization of robots. What would this civilization be like? Would they always necessarily revert to stereotypical action-reaction? Imagine, every one of them is able to replicate and/or repair other robots and is programmed to do so... this promotes so many questions and ideas, I don't even know where to begin.

TL;DR section:

What could happen in such a "society"? What kind of engineering would they have? Would errors, regardless of tech level, breed them into repetitive tasks? If they replicate errors, would they eventually just become non-functional, or could there be errors that cause erratic behavior that make them dangerous or unpredictable in their actions? Actually I hadn't considered this before typing that, but also, how dangerous would they be regardless of their programming, for example, would we ever approach such technology when we do not know how they store charges and probably have eroded and might contain dangerous chemicals?

How much of a malicious/predatory threat would they be? Could we hope to negotiate with them? If they did become very intelligent to the point that they become a true civilization with its own culture, would this culture resemble ours? Mainly, I want to imagine a bizarre, alien robot whose thoughts have evolved entirely different than might be expected of different forms of life, yet maintain a functional existence and intelligent near or greater than our own. They've been programmed to sustain and "improve" themselves over time.

/TL;DR
OK, you get the idea; Intelligent space alien robot race made by space aliens and left alone to replicate, improve, and repair themselves over time on their own with or without errors, but assuming they manage to still exist, develop culture, etc. What do you think they could be like and/or what would be an interesting way for them to be? Oh, and of course this all assumes aliens even exist etc