APSA member Southern Sky AI presented at ASMEX 2026 on the Gold Coast on 19th May, the 15th edition of the Australian Superyacht, Commercial Marine and Export Conference and the largest superyacht event in the Asia-Pacific region.
Founder and Principal Digital Navigator Kristina Agustin delivered a session titled Twelve Months of AI, and Losing Sleep, drawing on a year of work alongside maritime organisations.
What $11.5 Billion Investment Signals
The presentation opened with a signal from early May. In a single week, OpenAI and Anthropic both committed to multi-billion dollar deployment ventures — a combined $11.5 billion aimed at helping organisations put AI to work.
“The two most valuable AI companies in the world spent it agreeing on one point: AI delivers value when humans are embedded in the business doing the integration. The technology is ready. The deployment is the work.”
— Kristina Agustin, Founder and Principal Digital Navigator, Southern Sky AI
Three Things That Have to Align
Agustin set out three things that have to align for AI to deliver value. The first is domain expertise — the deep knowledge of how a maritime business runs, what the regulations require, and the rhythm of a season. The second is human adoption: the trust a team needs before it will rely on a tool, and the accountability owners and clients expect. The third is technology: the models, the platforms, and the governance layer underneath them.
Where Maritime Starts Ahead
In her view, maritime starts ahead on two of the three. The industry understands its regulations, its seasonal rhythms, and the way owners and clients expect things to work — and it knows how to bring teams through operational change.
The piece left to build is integration: translating what an operation already knows into how AI gets deployed inside it. That gap, she argues, is where most pilots stall.
“Maritime is built on exceptionalism — and AI adoption demands the same.”
— Kristina Agustin, Southern Sky AI
Read the Full Reflection
The full reflection — including the seven things Agustin has noticed working with maritime organisations across the year and the 28-minute recording of the ASMEX session — is published in the Southern Sky AI Chart Room.
Southern Sky AI is a governance-led, structured AI adoption practice for maritime leaders.