Why AI Now?

Hi, I'm Kristina Agustin, founder of Southern Sky AI.

"Steering Deliberately Into Disruption" is a 30 minute field briefing on AI for the Superyacht and broader Maritime Industries.

This year I've delivered this presentation to a few hundred industry leaders internationally in Australia and the United States, and the feedback has been very positive. Many who couldn't attend have asked for more information, so I've recorded it here to share it with you as well.

What is going on?

I don't know about you, but the speed that AI is infiltrating our lives is keeping me up at night. Online, we're seeing videos of toddlers being stolen away by alligators on a family's front porch, cats driving cars, or worse, the dark side of DeepFakes imitating public figures. Or worse again, YOU.

In major cities around the world, we have self-driving Ubers and in less democratic countries, constant personal surveillance, recording your image and activities on any given street, on any given day.

We're worried about how much all this will cost in energy use, or perhaps it will cost us our jobs?

I believe that we're in a collective societal crisis where we are all grappling with what these new technologies mean for us, our norms, our morals, and things we protect, like education, intellectual property, the environment, our livelihoods, our children, and the equitable distribution of wealth.

Artificial intelligence represents one of the most profound societal shifts that we'll witness in our lifetimes. Sundar Pichai, Google's CEO believes it's potentially more transformative than electricity or fire, what industry leaders are calling a fourth industrial revolution, and it's coming at us fast.

I attended a discussion with Chris Lehane, Chief Policy Officer at OpenAI, who said that this upheaval is less likely to happen over 10 years, and more likely to happen within five. It took the internet 10 years to get to where generative AI got to in only two.

And if you also notice the billions in investment fueling these technologies in the US and China, it can make any observer feel that we are somehow amidst a global race of intelligence.

In the US in July, 2025, President Trump released a strategic action plan stating "America is going to win it. It's not artificial. It's genius". In January, Biden's AI policies were revoked with an executive order to encourage innovation, accelerate approval processes for AI projects, and frame American AI leadership as a strategic national imperative.

The EU last year passed the world's first AI law, which imposes safeguards on the builders of AI models to protect EU citizens by ensuring the applications deemed to be higher risk include heavier human oversight.

In October in Australia, national AI policy guidelines were released to push businesses forward toward adoption. A big move from our previous risk averse policies.

As some of you may know, I've spent 20 years in the international superyacht industry, my first decade as crew, my second decade in large yacht operations, legal and management. As a qualified Australian lawyer and fleet business consultant, I navigate contracts, insurance, regulations, relationships, and (I hope) common sense to achieve the highest industry standards and outcomes.

Six years ago, I relocated back to Australia after 10 years in the US and started a digital agency focused on web development. From here I was uniquely positioned to see the transformative wave of AI coming. I dove headfirst into understanding AI from the inside out, pursuing a Masters in AI, completing executive education at UC Berkeley, becoming an AWS AI practitioner, and a certified AI Trainer and certified AI consultant.

I am passionate about working at the intersection of the superyacht industry, law and technology, helping bridge the gap between industry expertise and AI capability.

I founded Southern Sky AI to support superyacht and maritime industry businesses and the broader maritime sector to understand and make good strategic decisions about AI, how and what to implement, and how to steer deliberately into this disruption.

My goal today is to help you do the same by covering four things:

One, how we got here and what are these technologies anyway, because to know what you can do with it, you need to have a basic picture of how it works.

Two, use cases from the broader maritime sector as well as AI applications for each of our industry sub-sectors to consider, along with general business applications.

Three, considerations. Security, responsible AI practices, environmental impact, and how to determine return on investment.

And four, where to start.