Sail is going to come back in a big bad way, as economically sustainable becomes more important than profits-per-hour. Fossil fuels are a finite resource and even synthetic stuff costs less than the wind. Eventually it will become markedly inefficient to move fossil fuels around the world on vessels powered by fossil fuels, just to speed up the global supply chain. Fossil fuels will be too expensive to spend on shipping themselves. And AI doesn't really help with that problem, whereas there are so many possible applications of AI to make sailing as efficient as possible.
We're talking real-time micro adjustments across the whole ship, fuelled by satellite data. The whole thing could be automated, or it could be as simple as an AI local radio channel that everyone on ship is patched into during shift. It will probably become a better use of money and oil to make space-age fabrics for sails than to just burn it in exchange for going faster.
Sail is going to come back in a big bad way, as economically sustainable becomes more important than profits-per-hour. Fossil fuels are a finite resource and even synthetic stuff costs less than the wind. Eventually it will become markedly inefficient to move fossil fuels around the world on vessels powered by fossil fuels, just to speed up the global supply chain. Fossil fuels will be too expensive to spend on shipping themselves. And AI doesn't really help with that problem, whereas there are so many possible applications of AI to make sailing as efficient as possible.
We're talking real-time micro adjustments across the whole ship, fuelled by satellite data. The whole thing could be automated, or it could be as simple as an AI local radio channel that everyone on ship is patched into during shift. It will probably become a better use of money and oil to make space-age fabrics for sails than to just burn it in exchange for going faster.