The main challenges and barriers to the successful “smart shipping”

As with the powerful digitalization of the world in the 21st century, maritime affairs, like all other areas, are facing not only new opportunities, but also new big challenges and problems. From the point of view of the development of new technologies, it seems that everything is possible, for example the bringing of so-called "intelligent ships" and “smart ports” into one global system on base of internet of things and big data applications. However, if to look at the matter further, a number of factors and obstacles may appear which could be major threats to the normal functioning of such a system. While it is clear that systems with such high degree of complexity are even technically vulnerable, it seems to the author of this paper that questions that are no less difficult are in the field of human relations. For example, when ships and ports are becoming more and more "smarter" and need less and less people to intervene in their interactions, who at the end will be responsible for everything that can and definitely will happened at sea or in the port? What about liability of cargo carrier if “carrier” is an autonomous ship without any person on-board during the entire journey? How to ensure cyber security? How to be secured against the risks of so-called artificial intelligence systemic errors? It is possible that only new non-trivial approaches can lead to acceptable results in this area, but what they may be and whether these approaches are possible at all - these questions are still waiting for answers.