The transporter you see in the video (and the warship above) are both part of a move towards autonomous vessels.
Few vessels are as yet sailing on their own but this will come. Robotic and remote operation will be further augmented by artificial intelligence, to the point where us poor humans could become redundant.
We are seeing the same within dock environments, with guided trolleys moving containers around a number of ports. The containers readiness and placement are also being calculated by intelligent systems.
A question still arises of whether we can rely on developments which appear to be inescapable, when they may still have a way to go.
AI Misunderstandings
Google’s AI system Gemini (previously Bard) recently hit the news. When asked to provide images of German soldiers from 1943, the result was as below:
This issue is not unique, Google’s AI and alternative systems have answered other questions in strange ways. They overcompensate, or become too conservative, following instructions not to be biased.
The issue is AI’s reliance on instructions, or data based input, which are often created by human minds with all that encompasses.
Transferred Bias
We can see that information available on the internet is not always reliable and can at times be absurdly biased. A decision we arrive at by what could be described as intuition, or common sense.
Plenty of favourite sci-fi films lead us to believe these qualities are inherent in artificial systems but they are not.
Imagine a situation where an autonomous ship is sailing to port but tidal changes mean diverting from the normal channel to another. The trouble is that the ship’s AI has read about the sea monsters in the side channel.
A decision is made that avoiding the monsters is more important, with disaster ensuing. The AI could no more know that the monsters are not real than a five year old who is worried about what’s under the bed.
Issues that arise going forward may in reality be more subtle, although the result could be just as undesirable.
The Real World
Cameras, microphones, radar, GPS and other satellite input make significant contributions to our ability to move goods around the globe. They help semi-autonomous ships and have seen crew numbers reduce.
Their function is however to feed data to aid human decisions. A system which feeds the data to itself to make those decisions is a quite different concept and one which may be further away than we imagine.
Perhaps in the end ships will sail alone, our ports and offices be empty of people but there is a gap between the hype and reality, with AI minds needing to be more capable.
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