Welcome back to another week of MaritimeCIO! This week we’re back on everyone’s favourite topic… AI. How can AI actually improve maritime processes in a measurable way and what are the risks you should be considering?

This week, I linked up with Giuseppe Oliveri, Director of d’Amico Tankers, who has nearly 35 years of experience in maritime operations. Having witnessed the evolution from manual processes to today's AI-integrated workflows, Giuseppe shared his insights on how AI is shaping the maritime industry.

We all know by now that AI is a fantastic tool that has changed the way we work forever, but it’s not this magic solution that instantly generates the perfect response every time. Giuseppe explained, “AI needs training, and to train it, we need to feed it with verified, structured data. Over the course of a year, you may start to see some  real benefits.” It takes a lot of time and data to train an AI model to truly understand the topics it’s writing about. For example, to monitor a ship’s performance or where and when the cheapest bunkering opportunities are on a particular voyage.

AI’s new ability to search the web for sources and evidence to justify its writing brings a whole new challenge in itself. If everybody is using AI to write reports, media posts, news articles and AI is drawing on these facts as evidence to write reports, media posts, news articles, then AI is effectively training itself based on what it believes to be true… Not the factual truth.

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Giuseppe went on to discuss some of the legal concerns he has, “If AI is not properly trained or guided, it pulls data from anywhere. That becomes dangerous, especially in legal or operational contexts like contract analysis or claims handling.”

“One of the biggest risks is misinformation… You'll need to double-check everything.” It’s sound advice that we all know to be true, but sometimes forget to follow. Something to bear in mind - when everybody is raving about how much time AI has saved them, are they factoring in the time that they should be spending checking their AI-generated content for hallucinations or inaccuracies?

The growing use of AI also opens the door to increased cyber risks for both ship and shore. Without policies in place to limit the use of AI, there is no way to govern what company information employees are loading into unvetted AI software. It’s important in this age of digital advancements to consider how your cybersecurity practices need to evolve.

Despite these concerns, Giuseppe is still a big advocate for AI, “Manually comparing contracts can take a person a day or more. AI can do it in minutes. That's a massive gain in efficiency and accuracy.” And this is true for all maritime departments, wherever there’s a repetitive manual task, the chances are that AI can help. Of course, you will still need a human to check over the data received. At d’Amico Tankers, they have to validate on a monthly basis.  

Giuseppe’s advice is to remember that artificial intelligence always needs to be balanced with real, human intelligence. “Emotional intelligence and interpersonal interactions should remain human… AI can't replicate emotion.” And he’s right, in a world full of AI-written content, the real value lies in the insights you can offer through your personal experiences and knowledge.

Finally, looking to the future, Giuseppe offered his opinion on how he believes AI will develop over the coming years. His perspective is refreshingly balanced and highlights both the threats and opportunities AI could bring: “I hope it develops in a way that's beneficial but still recognises the value of people. I don't believe we'll ever fully rely on AI in maritime. Some jobs will be replaced, basic, repetitive ones. But new roles will also be created.”

Well, that’s all for another week of MaritimeCIO. I hope you found reading this article as fun as I did writing it! Ailsa