As I gaze at the computer screen, a yacht emerges before me. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen on the water - a fairly typical hull, painted turquoise, married to a superstructure resembling a towering Egyptian pyramid adorned in gilded patterns and curved glass. It appears within seconds of typing in a few keywords, as if conjured from a coded mist. And, indeed, it was.
I am being guided through the world of artificial intelligence (AI) by Rob Armstrong, creative director of ThirtyC Yacht Design, who is showing me a few of the AI applications that his studio is currently using. Armstrong is one of the many yacht designers and naval architects who have been exploring AI as a tool to aid in the superyacht design process. Other designers have been less keen on embracing AI, warning it could ring the death knell for creativity.
The yachting industry’s varied opinions on AI are emblematic of the debate in wider society. There are those who are keen to dive in and see how it might be useful - and profitable - to humans. And there are those who fear its very existence, that its future iterations will spell an end to humankind as we know it.
Designers like Armstrong are experimenting with generative AI, which refers to algorithms that can create content such as images or text from amalgamations of information already available online. The much-discussed ChatGPT is one example. Artificial general intelligence (AGI), on the other hand, is the stuff of sci-fi: an advanced AI that, in the future, will be able to learn and think like a human and carry
