Title is misleading. The vessel has "autonomous navigation", I guess this is some autopilot function which is probably widespread these days.

I thought of "autonomous" as in "no crew onboard". That would be good for piracy (there is nobody to kidnap and no hostage which could die). For everything else I think the few humans and their facilities onboard don't make a big difference in payload or so. Having a human onboard is still an asset in many situations.

Not many pirates on the Chinese coast these days since the Zheng Yi Sao in the beginning of the 1800s. She had a fleet of 400 ships and 50,000 pirates.

this ship just takes a short route back and forth between two cities.

> Title is misleading. The vessel has "autonomous navigation", I guess this is some autopilot function which is probably widespread these days.

AIUI not really for basically the reason you describe, that if we're moving 100_000 + DWT a handful of humans are inconsequential so you might as well. The radio gear on a big cargo ship will be generations better than on the New York to Paris jet you flew on but the navigation is much less sophisticated.

The Global Maritime Distress and Safety System (GMDSS) mandates Digital Selective Calling, which is 1980s digital radio technology. You could do much better if you started from scratch with today's technology, but the technology on that jetliner is 100+ year old AM VHF analogue radio. DSC can manage the "Dawn Treader" wants to talk to "Happy Fishing", the "Happy Fishing" wants to talk to all six other "Fishing" vessels including "Grumpy Fishing" and "Doc Fishing", and Exxon Champion has an emergency so it needs to tell everybody it's on fire and come help -- without a problem while air radio needs everybody to be patient and just shut up so that one person can talk at a time.

On the other hand the jetliner can hold altitude, plan approaches, and even complete a landing unassisted if absolutely necessary whereas the boat needs a human at the controls, all day and all night, 24/7 while at sea. This is tedious work but it isn't automated and the result is that humans routinely fall asleep and cause serious problems.

> I guess this is some autopilot function which is probably widespread these days.

Hopefully it's better than FSD