Crews on those ships are spending nearly all their time maintaining them.

Many flag and port states already allow One Man Bridge Operation (OMBO) in many circumstances. This means there's basically on person on the bridge, and maybe one other person down in the engine room keeping an eye on a floating city block moving through the water at 15 knots

The 5 wage slaves on current ocean giants aren't even a rounding error on any calculation.

The wage isn’t the problem, it’s the regulations.

... would there really not be regulations on giant unmanned ships? That seems concerning, though I could certainly understand international / maritime law having a gap.

I give coastal piracy about 3-weeks to figure out how to commandeer unmanned cargo ships. I bet they’d be ecstatic.

taps head

cant' steer without a helm

you think they won't figure out how to hotwire the steer-by-wire controls?

Now, allow me to introduce you to the ID verification. Insert your biometric passport to proceed. /j

You think current sea pirates are deterred by an unarmed crew of 5?

No cardboard, no cardboard derivatives, no cellotape.

Never going to happen in your lifetime.

Salt water, is nasty, it gets everywhere, the environment on boats is damp. Ships are complicated and require constant effort to keep running.

Any sort of "automation" you build in is subject to those same environmental conditions, and wont last long.

This idea that putting $500m+ of assets in the water, but thinking that even one person on the boat is too many has got to be one of the silliest things in modern capitalism (obviously the crown goes to orbital AI data centers).

The same bosses will pay multiple security guards, in addition to staff, to guard <$10m in goods at a Walmart. But when 50x the goods are in the ocean, suddenly the staff is the limiter?

Yeah, autonomous shipping makes sense for naval/coastguard drones but not much else. Shipping companies can pay most of the staff Filipino wages, and they run around doing all sorts of maintenance tasks, not just navigation and contro.

Now the crew will be very pleased if they get a Starlink connection rather than the ridiculously small crew connectivity allowance Inmarsat et al will give them, but that all depends on shipping companies not having to pay premium prices for maritime connectivity.