Over the last few years, the world has deliberated and developed numerous ethical principles and frameworks. It is the general opinion that the time has arrived to move from principles and to operationalize on the ethical practice of AI. It is now recognized that principles and standards can play a universal harmonizing role for the development of AI-related legal norms across the globe. However, how do we translate and embrace these articulated values, principles and actions to guide Nation States around the world to formulate their regulatory systems, policies or other legal instruments regarding AI? Our regulatory systems have attempted to keep abreast of new technologies by recalibrating and adapting our regulatory frameworks to provide for new opportunities and risks, to confer rights and duties, safety and liability frameworks, and to ensure legal certainty for businesses. These past adaptations have been reactive and sometimes piecemeal, often with artificial delineation on rights and responsibilities and with unintended flow-on consequences. Previously, technologies have been deployed more like tools, but as autonomy and self-learning capabilities increase, robots and intelligent AI systems will feel less and less like machines and tools. There is now a significant difference, because machine learning AI systems have the ability ‘to learn’, adapt their performances and ‘make decisions’ from data and ‘life experiences’. This paper presented at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence - Pacific Rim International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in 2021 provides brief insights on some selected topical developments in ethical principles and frameworks, our regulatory systems and the current debates on some of the risks and challenges from the use and actions of AI, autonomous and intelligent systems [1].