Reduced Crewing

So, the unions will argue about ships safety. That comment was stated during the video showing a broke ship on the rocks. Was it human error that caused that wreck? The US navy ship on that reef south of the PIs. Valdez? Near every grounding? Costa?
Imagine a version of air traffic control (one that works) for ships on the high seas (Surface Traffic Control). Less room for one or two people to blunder. A room full of controllers (still need unlimited masters?) over watching and directing all surface traffic.

I'm not in a hurry for full automation. To many politicians would be involved in this and that turns me off quickly. You can always count on politics to screw up a good thing.

Then, can even Rolls Royce build a ship that will not breakdown or have failures while deployed? NOT!!!

Na, Crews will probably never be replaced. Still fun to ponder.

The idea of STC still is appealing to help reduce the grounding examples above.

,rc

Full automation is never full automation. Basically what technology has done most of the time is change the role of humans, change the human jobs. Computerization is the best example. Takes people now to operate and maintain the systems.

I would imagine any movement toward automation of shipping vessels such as in the video will be accompanied by a requirement of people on board maintaining the systems. In addition there will be more on land monitoring and controlling. Just like robotics in manufacturing. Yes, the reduce some people. But at the same time they also create some other positions, generally better paying, in managing them. We are not to the stage of just turning things over to robots and leaving them on their own. We are to the stage of turning detailed tasks over and monitoring as opposed to doing.

Navigation of ships and planes are another good example. Could we set autopilots and flight or sailing paths remotely? Yes. Do captains of ships and planes do less actual "driving" than once? Yes. But they monitor everything and stand by to take over manually as required.

Many decades from now that might change. But it's all a very slow evolution, not a drastic immediate revolution.

Driverless cars are already legal in some states (for testing purposes for now) and UAVs are already operating all over the place.

It will happen.

In a manner of speaking UAV's have been around for decades, back to the remote controlled airplanes we played with as kids.

With each of these it's a matter of evolving from the concept to practical applications and it's generally not an all at once type change, but little by little figuring out how to make them work in the real world.

Concept of driverless cars would be a lot easier if all cars were driverless. But a complicating factor is all the other cars out there that have drivers. They don't behave in the same way as the driverless.

The world evolves. Ultimately roles change. Hopefully we are able to change as technology does. For many it creates new opportunities and challenges. Unfortunately, it does leave some behind and they have difficulty gaining the newly required skills.

It's exciting to some, scary to others. I recall an older lady years ago in the office who we worked with for ages to get her to use the computer rather than hard documents. Finally, had to tell her the hard documents were going to end and you could just sense the panic. In fact, she was never able to really adapt as much as we tried to help her. I felt so sorry for her as she was a good person. She was only a couple of years to retirement so basically we just let her do two or three hours of work a day, mostly without computer, that she could handle until then as she'd been loyal for 30+ years.

There was a time that the training one got when young was sufficient for a career. Now I'd say anyone 25 years old can expect to have to learn a entirely new job or role at least twice more in their career. I look at something like the shipping vessels and I do worry about what those ultimately displaced in their current jobs will do afterward. In the ideal world, the employer trains them for new jobs, but we don't live in the ideal world.