7.1 Introduction

This chapter is intended as a brief introduction to the future role of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning in maritime and trade law. It therefore seems appropriate to us to commence in Section 7.2 with a brief note on what we consider AI and machine learning to mean. Such technologies are more often used than defined, and not everything is as it may at first seem. Indeed much confusion is caused by application of the wrong base line definition and so we have taken this as our starting point.