  Autonomous Vehicles (AV) are expected to bring considerable benefits to
society, such as traffic optimization and accidents reduction. They rely
heavily on advances in many Artificial Intelligence (AI) approaches and
techniques. However, while some researchers in this field believe AI is the
core element to enhance safety, others believe AI imposes new challenges to
assure the safety of these new AI-based systems and applications. In this
non-convergent context, this paper presents a systematic literature review to
paint a clear picture of the state of the art of the literature in AI on AV
safety. Based on an initial sample of 4870 retrieved papers, 59 studies were
selected as the result of the selection criteria detailed in the paper. The
shortlisted studies were then mapped into six categories to answer the proposed
research questions. An AV system model was proposed and applied to orient the
discussions about the SLR findings. As a main result, we have reinforced our
preliminary observation about the necessity of considering a serious safety
agenda for the future studies on AI-based AV systems.
