The role of AI in maritime: can it help us be more human?

This episode of The Shipping Podcast is brought to you by Veson AI can provide valuable decision-making support in maritime supply chain management and it is not just a dry academic exercise: in this podcast we hear that we should play with it and have some fun along the way Eric Christofferson is Chief Product Officer at Veson Nautical, which is a provider of maritime data and freight management solutions to support global commerce. His experience with AI outside maritime reveal interesting insights in how to approach AI and get the most from it. Eric Christofferson shares his perspective on AI’s role in the maritime industry coming from the fintech industry. There are some interesting differences between them, in particular its management of data standards and information. In this podcast, he discusses how shipping relies heavily on what he calls traditional tools, such as emails and messaging services, saying that managers have to “mine that information and … structure the unstructured data.” In fintech, data is more organised. Algorithms can execute trades based on such parameters as price points and market movements but shipping has not yet reached a level of standardisation that would allow AI to make equivalent decisions. “In this industry, I haven’t seen a clean enough data set for that type of guidance to be given,” Mr Christofferson says. But in this podcast, he is confident that solutions that Veson and others provide offer “really compelling workflows and solutions” that can address this situation, bringing together data from disparate and unstructured sources. He explores whether decisions are better if they are supported by AI and believes it can play an important role in decision making. During the podcast, he offers some practical advice on getting the best out of AI-based decisions, saying that it is important to decide where in a workflow they will add value. This is how Veson approaches its work with clients and within its own organisation when introducing AI across its portfolio of solutions. He also shares why it’s important to avoid “trying to ‘AI’ everything”, why not everything is suitable for an AI solution and how to make using AI fun in an organisation. He tells the podcast that it is important to build trust for AI-generated decisions, describing that process in a similar way to developing a human relationship; “you can trust it, but you verify it,” he says. And because it can streamline data input and communication between systems, it enables people to focus on other decision-making priorities and allows them “to connect with each other at a human level” he says.