Artificial intelligence (AI) aboard boats are grabbing headlines as the future of boating, but the technology can never replace hands-on boating skills and experience.
Photo, Bill Roche
Quite a few years ago, we were safely tied alongside a floating dock just off the main channel of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway. Well, we thought we were safely tied. There were numerous other boats on the dock, but room for just a few more. Bad weather was coming, the current was ripping along the dock, and we all felt a sense of satisfaction having safely shoehorned
our boats into a dock space without doing any damage to ourselves or anybody else. Then came the grand finale.
A very fancy aft-cockpit trawler sidled up toward the dock, obviously intending to tie up. A few of us rushed over to help with their lines, but the skipper waved us off with a smug, “I got this.” True to his prediction, with his hand on the stick, he sandwiched in between the yachts ahead and astern, laying his beautiful boat along the dock. He jumped off and headed to the harbormaster’s office to sign up and pay – oblivious!
He’d completely overlooked tying his lines! They weren’t in place or even visible on deck. I and others rushed around ready to grab the boat before the rushing, eddying current pushed it into another boat. We were still there, our own lines and boathooks in hand, when the skipper sauntered back. Someone called to him as he approached, “You forgot to tie up your boat!”
“Oh, I don’t need to,” he said. He explained that he had “joystick” control. “It keeps the boat in place.”
This was many years ago, and many were not very familiar with this technology. I was, but I was mighty unhappy that this guy had hopped off his boat and strolled off without tying up. Nobody else was impressed either. He did tie up later, probably because he wanted to shut his engines down. Now that we’re in the glorious age of AI, I guess he could have made it all the way from where he’d stopped the night before, without even getting out of his bunk.
These days, the AI high priests say that AI can do far more than getting you docked or even getting you from port to port. I worry about that. I’ve used the technology – is that really what you call it? – and have noticed a few things. Here’s an example: Not long ago, I asked AI where Gun Cay was, just for the hell of it. AI said that Gun Cay was on Great Abaco. Well, no. Gun Cay is a small island around 10 miles south of Bimini, with plenty of reef between Gun and Bimini. And then there’s the Northwest Providence Channel between Bimini and the general Great Abaco area, with Abaco being well to the northeast. I kept checking over the next few days and finally noticed that this erroneous description had been updated to be more accurate. But if my nav gear had relied on AI at that particular moment, and I hadn’t known better and been actively at the helm, I could have been in serious trouble.
I’ve noticed other similar examples, including issues with technical “advice” from what is considered to be AI. Sometimes this advice can be helpful, particularly with general issues. But often, to get meaningful help, you need to provide so many specifics and parameters that you’d probably know the answer yourself if you’d figured it out by traditional means.
These AI systems, when asked a question, cannot see, hear, or feel what you’re experiencing – such as the feel in your fingers from resistance, subtle new smells or faint noises, slightly weird vibrations from somewhere, how the engine has been running in the past, and so on. Sure, you can use measuring devices such as torque wrenches and decibel meters to “input” information. But that can be impractical. Sometimes you’ve just got to learn from experience, personal observation, and a developed common sense on how to fix the thing. And with seamanship, there’s so much more.
When talking about actually running a boat with AI systems, marketing folks usually say that the skipper must remain proactive, carefully vigilant, and be quick to take over. This is, of course, all very true. But as the technology becomes more prevalent and we start to overly rely on AI to run the boat, how will we know what to do when we take over, and even when to take over? Will there be an ever-growing population of boaters who won’t know what to do?
Running a boat of any kind takes understanding of and familiarity with what’s going on and, most importantly, hands-on skill and built experience. There are an infinite myriad of variables out on the ocean, rivers, and lakes, and with how your particular boat, with all its features, handles them. The sea is NOT a static roadway with lines painted on the sides, signage, and traffic lights.
I know that AI is supposed to deal with and process the nuances of boat motions, hull responses, helm responses, throttle responses, loading characteristics, wave effects, eddy effects, wind effects, error scenarios, and so on. But I’m an old guy who knows the sea and what it’s really like; someone who has been running his own boats (a whole lot of them) since his first boat at age 9. I think that overreliance on what we’re now calling AI can be a serious mistake. Reasonable use of AI may be good, assuming we can figure out what’s reasonable without using AI to figure that out.
The term “artificial intelligence” also presents a problem. It is sometimes thrown about rather loosely. The definition seems to have evolved over time and when some people say a product is “AI,” it may not be necessarily so. It behooves us to determine exactly what people are talking about when they use the term, if we can.
There’s another angle here. The AI high priests overlook a fundamentally important question: Why are we “going boating” anyway? Most of us go for the fun, enjoyment, pleasure, sheer thrill, and sense of accomplishment in handling our boats in a sea. What happens with this if we’re letting computers do it?
Now, obviously, all this is just one guy’s opinion, and the cool, smart people who “know all about AI” likely have a different opinion. But I do know that what we’re calling AI can’t pray for me, and that’s what it may have to do if we all start relying on it too much.