Ethical and Moral aspects in UAV and artificial intelligence

We already entered the era of Unmanned Vehicles, drones, boats and more recently cars are going to be “driven” by software, sensors, cameras, radars and more are the senses of our vehicles. If the risk that a flying or floating drone can be hacked is concerning us as well as the temporary lack of specific legislation, what about the concerns related to ethical and moral aspects, not neglecting the legal ones, concerning autonomous road vehicles such as cars and buses ? Safety and security standards for such devices are not set actually, how will behave two cars, both from the same builder or not, in case of imminent collision? Of course, the cyber-driver is supposed to be perfect but the environment may introduce some bias, hence on the moral and ethical side how will the cyber-driver take decisions? As an additional concern, today even cars may be subject to cyber-attacks as it already happened to Jeep vehicles in the United States, if on one side the regular car service or re-call for update can be performed through the permanent car connection to the Internet, no more need to physically take the car back to the service (this might lead to unwanted outcomes), on the other side in case of cyber-attacks our car might behave in a unpredictable way. As a consequence, possibly before a mass diffusion of such vehicles, we must be aware about some aspects: the risk of cyber-attacks that may turn everyday commodities like cars into “weapons” and the “programmed” behaviour of cars in case of “risky” scenarios. Security standards and harmonised “behaviours” together with an appropriate legal framework will probably help.