Professional ethics involving cyber security and autonomous robots

This chapter draws on two discipline areas as a means of illustrating what ICAT professionalism entails. One exemplar area is that of cyber security and the other is that of autonomous robots. Professionalism in the first involves notions of ethical hacking. In robotics the focus is on the new area of care robots which assist in, support, and care for vulnerable people, such as the elderly; it is an area of ICAT that sits under the wider area of artificial intelligence. These two areas are explored through topics which include a critique of codes of conduct and professional certification. Both of these areas have multi-disciplinary and multi-jurisdictional aspects, which bring into question which professional societies’ codes apply to particular situations and whether such codes are enforceable. The outcomes of ethical decision-making, an area inadequately addressed to date in the literature, is the contribution of this chapter.