Time flies. And right now, technology is flying even faster.
I’ve been part of Shipnet since 1998. As a Norwegian who has followed both the shipping industry and technology through some remarkable cycles - the hype, the resets, the real breakthroughs - I don’t say this lightly: AI is the single biggest shift I’ve seen in my career.
Not because of the headlines, but because of how quickly it’s becoming usable in day-to-day operations.
At Nor-Shipping last year, I spoke about AI and what it might mean for shipping. At the time, it was still largely potential. Interesting, promising - but hard to quantify in real terms.
A year on, that’s changed.
You start to see where it matters when you look at the parts of the operation that have always taken more time than they should.
Take document management. Anyone running vessels knows how much time is lost searching - manuals, certificates, reports, versions of versions. It’s not one big problem, it’s hundreds of small ones that add up.
What we’re seeing now, including in our own Shipnet Document Management workflows, is that you can simply ask a question in plain language and get a usable answer back. Not a list of files - an answer. That changes the pace of work immediately. And more importantly, it means the right information is actually there when you need it.
The same applies in dry docking. Anyone who’s been through it knows how heavy the admin side can get. The operational work is one thing - the documentation, reporting, and specifications around it are another.
We’ve seen, through Shipnet Dry Docking, how things like report completion and specification building can move from being a bottleneck to something much more manageable. Not perfect, not automatic - but no longer the grind it once was.
These aren’t headline features. They’re small, practical shifts.
But they add up.
And they point to something bigger.
When we introduced Helix at Posidonia a couple of years ago, we talked about unlocking the value of data. At the time, we knew it mattered - but we didn’t fully see how far it could go.
Now it’s much clearer.
AI is only as useful as the data underneath it. If your data is fragmented, delayed, or hard to access, AI doesn’t solve the problem - it just sits on top of it.
What Helix does is make that data usable. It brings structure and accessibility to information that was already there, but difficult to work with. That’s what makes everything else possible.
It’s something Niall Jack has been talking about a lot - and he’s right to emphasise it.
AI can accelerate insight. It can surface patterns faster than we ever could manually.
But it doesn’t replace judgement.
And in shipping, that matters.
Decisions here aren’t made in isolation. They carry operational, financial, and safety implications - often all at once. The role of technology is to make those decisions clearer, not to remove the thinking behind them.
That balance - between speed and judgement - is where the real value sits.
We’re seeing the same shift internally as well. AI is becoming part of how we build, how we test, how we deliver. It’s helping us move faster and focus effort where it actually matters.
But it only works because it’s grounded in real operations, with people still very much in the loop.
At the same time, the environment around us isn’t getting any simpler.
Routes shift. Risks change. Insurance follows. Crews feel that pressure long before it shows up in a report.
Shipping has always dealt with uncertainty. What’s different now is the expectation that decisions can be made quickly, and with a clear understanding of their impact across the business.
That’s difficult if your information is spread across systems, teams, and formats.
It becomes far more manageable when you can see the full picture - and trust what you’re looking at.
That, ultimately, is what all of this comes back to.
Not AI as a headline.
Not systems for the sake of systems.
But having the clarity to make decisions when it matters.
We’ll be at Posidonia again this June. Not from a stand, but in the conversations happening around it.
If you’re looking at how this plays out in your own operation, it’s a good time to compare notes.
Terje Kristiansen
CEO, Shipnet