Should Every Officer Be Trained to Doubt the Machine?

The IMO began a full review of STCW, the convention that sets training and certificate standards for seafarers, in 2024. The first phase found more than 400 possible gaps. Changes are now being written, with completion targeted for 2029 to 2030. In an article for Seatrade this week, Capt. Pradeep Chawla, chief executive of training company MarinePALS and chairman of GlobalMET, argued that the review should make AI literacy a formal STCW competence.

What he means, in plain words. Not programming. Not how to write a good prompt. He means seafarers should know that AI can sound certain and still be wrong. They should be able to spot invented facts, bias, missing information and data-security risks. Most of all, they should know when their own judgement, and what they see from the bridge, must overrule the machine. His example is a voyage recommendation built from weather, traffic and fuel data. Before following it, the officer should check that the data is current, that the ship's real limits were included, and that the advice matches what he or she can see outside.

Two levels. Everyone would get basic awareness. Officers, and anyone responsible for AI-enabled systems, would get deeper skills: checking results, knowing limits, escalating and overriding. He says the standard should not be tied to any product, because products change quickly. And the exam should test behaviour, not definitions. Give the candidate a plan with a false reference, missing data, or an efficient route that breaks a safety limit, and see whether they catch it. He also wants crews to know what must never be typed into an unapproved tool: personal data, commercial data, ship vulnerabilities and protected records.

The honest part. This is an opinion piece, and the author runs a company that sells maritime training. A new STCW competence would be good for his business. That does not make him wrong. The argument is sound, and he says openly that he is an early adopter of these tools himself. A second voice this week pointed the same way. An analysis in Offshore Magazine argued that people use AI with more confidence when they know which decisions stay theirs, and that every AI system should have a written limit on what it may do on its own.

What you can do before 2030. You do not need to wait for the IMO. Your company can write down two things now: which decisions an AI tool may support, and which decisions always stay with the officer. Then add one scenario to your next onboard drill or familiarisation where the tool is wrong on purpose. If your officers have never seen an AI tool fail, they will not recognise the first real failure. [Seatrade Maritime · Offshore Magazine]

This story is part of the Maritime AI Digest of 27 September 2026.