The AI At Sea conference session on the second day of Seawork 2026 had a direct and simple instruction for those attending– "Do something."
Focused firmly on the revolutionary impact of the recent and radical change in AI capability, the forceful message came from Nigel Taylor, the Chief Executive of PerformOS, who presented the session with the sub-title, 'Drive It - Don't Build the Engine'.
He made the point that machine learning AI has been around for more than 20 years, leading the way in developing planning such as predictive maintenance schedules.
However, he argued that the past 24 months had "changed what is possible" with the arrival of generative AI and AI-powered automation in business processes in general, and chatbots in particular.
All the major AI players – including Microsoft, Google, Apple and OpenAI – were upgrading their chatbots on an almost weekly basis, he added. This in turn has led to a dramatic increase in the use of 'vibe coding', software applications which can be easily created by simply talking to AI and instructing it, and autonomous software programs called 'agents' that can be directed to pursue goals with minimal human oversight.
Taylor acknowledged that recent change in AI has been so rapid it has escaped the attention of many people, but made the case that businesses and organisations had to harness its real-world potential. To put it simply, they had to 'do something'.
For anyone who attended the AI session and missed the QR code, you can access the presentation and event workbook
here.
