AiatSea: When the Link Drops, Who Is in Charge of the AI on Board?

Look again at this week's stories and you see the same moment in every one. The phone agent passes the caller to a person. The boat stops a metre from the pontoon and gives the helm back. The lab agent goes somewhere it was never allowed to go, and someone has to notice. In each case the system is sold on what it does. Nobody sells the moment it stops.

A column on SplashTech this week puts that moment on board a ship. Taskin Karlar, chief executive of the technology company Sector88, starts from a fact most superintendents know. More and more data is processed on the ship, not ashore. Soon there will be AI models running on board, not just in an office in Hamburg or Singapore. So what happens when the satellite link goes down for three days?

It is not a theory. In July 2025, Starlink went down worldwide for about two and a half hours after a software update on its ground systems. On 8 October, the Joint Maritime Information Center described GPS jamming and spoofing as normal across the Gulf and the approaches to Hormuz. A ship's AI may lose its link, its position and its supplier at the same time.

His anchor is one we all know. Under the ISM Code, the master has overriding authority on board. Karlar argues that this must apply to AI as well, and asks owners to settle the details before they sign, not after.

His questions, in plain words. How does the system behave with no link for several days? Who on board can stop it? Who holds the digital keys that allow new versions to be installed? How is an update approved, and how is it reversed if it goes wrong? Where is the record of what the system decided, and can anyone change it afterwards? He also asks class societies to treat AI updates like any other change to a ship's computer systems, and to look at the logs of what actually ran, not only at diagrams.

We would add the person. All of those questions are about the machine. The other half is the officer who takes over. When the AI stops, will the officer on watch know that it stopped? Will they know what it was doing? And have they done the job by hand recently enough to do it well at 0300? The boat in story 2 at least asks the skipper to confirm they are at the helm. Most shipboard systems do not ask anything.

Five questions for your next AI contract. What does it do with no link for 72 hours? Who on board can switch it off, and is that written in the safety management system? Who approves updates, and can we refuse one? Where is the decision log kept, and is it ours? And when it hands over to a person, how does that person know, and when did they last practise? A supplier who has thought about these will answer quickly. A supplier who has not will talk about features. Either way, you will learn something. [Splash247 · Sector88 · Yachting Magazine · AiatSea, 11 October]

This story is part of the Maritime AI Digest of 18 October 2026.