The Titanic Disaster and the Conundrum of AI Safety
The Titanic Disaster and the Conundrum of AI Safety
We must not sleepwalk into AI disaster, ignoring the risks that lie ahead.
If you have any interest in AI, and everyone should, then the lessons from the Titanic are highly relevant for the safe deployment of AI – especially as we are full steam ahead on deployment of this potentially societal changing technology.
On April 10, 1912, at 12:00 noon, the RMS Titanic[1] departed from Southampton, England, on her maiden voyage, bound for New York City. The docks were crowded with nearly 100,000 spectators who gathered to witness the launch of the world's largest and most luxurious ocean liner. The Titanic was owned by the White Star Line, a British shipping company, and was designed by Thomas Andrews, the ship was formally inaugurated by J. Bruce Ismay, chairman of the White Star Line, both of whom were onboard her maiden voyage.
Between the night of April 14th and early morning of the 15th, the North Atlantic sea was almost unnaturally still, with water so calm it appeared like glass, as later described by many survivors. Whilst the passengers aboard the Titanic, likely marvelled at this engineering marvel, the world followed with massive press coverage, celebrating what was hailed as a master-stroke of human ingenuity, a vessel lauded as the crowning achievement of the modern era. But history would prove that beneath the façade of invincibility lay a catastrophic mix of arrogance, bureaucratic folly, and institutional blindness.
Limitations of Technology
The Titanic's tragedy is not simply a tale of steel colliding with ice. It is a harsh indictment of complacency and systemic failure, of outdated or overlooked safety standards, and misplaced trust in technology. The official records, including construction blueprints, maritime safety regulations, and inquiry testimonies, present a story of state-of-the-art design, watertight compartments, adequate lifeboats, rigorous safety checks, but these same records, upon scrutiny, reveal a tragedy shaped by flaws in regulation, negligence in oversight, and human ego.
There were many other failings in the technology, some due to unproven or not thoroughly tested systems or protocols. Such as the Marconi wireless communication system, whilst a groundbreaking innovation, it was still in its early stages in 1912. The Titanic's wireless system had a limited range and was prone to interference. Additionally, there were no standardized procedures for distress calls, which led to confusion and delays in relaying the Titanic's SOS. There were also technical oversights. The Titanic was not equipped with searchlights, which may have helped to detect the icebergs in the darkness.
Some research, such as that conducted by metallurgist Tim Foecke and his colleagues, suggests that the quality of the rivets used in the Titanic's hull was inferior. This might have contributed to the ship's vulnerability to damage upon impact with the iceberg.
The Illusion of Preparedness
The Titanic was built without compromise. Money was no object, with an estimated construction cost equivalent to approximately $400 million in today's terms, and attention to detail was lavished on every aspect, from the gilded banisters of first-class to the reinforced hull. But this grandeur concealed a critical, institutional failure. The British Board of Trade, responsible for setting and enforcing UK maritime safety regulations, relying on outdated regulations, required Titanic to carry lifeboats for only 1,176 people, barely more than half of those on board. Despite its capacity to carry over 2,200 passengers and crew, Titanic set sail woefully under-equipped.
Regulatory myopia compounded the problem. The British Board of Trade, which was essentially bound by rules written for smaller ships, deferred responsibility to the White Star Line, assuming that engineering advances negated the need for new safety provisions. These assumptions reflected an institutional blindness, a belief that bigger was inherently safer, and that trust in a large corporation like White Star Line would ensure safety, in other words, money and the illusions of progress were a substitute for preparedness.
A Mirage of Safety
The Titanic's safety features, praised by its builders, only served to deepen the illusion of invincibility. Lifeboats were left without essential provisions like compasses or lights. The Titanic's lifeboats were equipped with both oars and small sails to assist with navigation in case of drifting in open water. The sails would be used primarily if there was enough wind to aid the lifeboats' movement or to conserve energy while rowing. However, those sails, were tied with simple twine instead of more durable materials. The use of twine suggests these critical emergency tools were not intended to be truly effective in case of an emergency and effectively useless. Water-tight compartments, hailed as revolutionary, were incapable of preventing disaster once breached. These compartments, designed to delay flooding, not stop it, sealed Titanic’s fate when more than four filled with freezing seawater, tearing away the veneer of engineering perfection.
Hubris on the Bridge
The institutional failures were matched by failures in command. Captain Edward Smith, lauded for his experience, found himself at the helm of a vessel many believed beyond impervious to danger. Warnings of ice came thick and fast on the night of April 14. Wireless operators documented messages from nearby ships, including one from the Cyril Evans, the wireless operator of the S.S. Californian: "We are stopped and surrounded by ice." The message, received by the Titanic's wireless operator just an hour before the tragedy, was met with a brisk response by Jack Phillips: "Shut up. Shut up, I am busy. I am working Cape Race." Cape Race is a point of land on the southeastern tip of Newfoundland, Canada. It was a key navigational landmark for ships crossing the Atlantic, and during the early 20th century, it also served as an important location for wireless communication. In this context, "working Cape Race" means that the Titanic's wireless operator was busy communicating with a relay station at Cape Race, which was often used to send and receive messages between ships and the mainland, including personal messages from passengers. The dismissive response to the S.S. Californian's message reflects a prioritization of non-emergency communications over crucial safety warnings. Caution was an afterthought to prestige.
Smith pushed ahead, keeping the ship at full steam, approximately 22 knots (about 25 nautical miles per hour), in a race across the Atlantic to make newspaper headlines and presumably more money for the owners. The pursuit of speed, status, and public adulation was chosen over prudence, as icebergs loomed in the dark waters ahead. This decision, a direct manifestation of both personal pride and corporate pressure, proved fatal.
The O Ring Moment
Disaster struck not because of a single catastrophic failure, but because of many small ones, converging to ensure the ship’s doom. The lookout lacked binoculars, an oversight, but one emblematic of broader failings. When the iceberg was finally sighted, there was too little time to correct the course. Attempts to maneuver such a massive vessel at high speed were predictably sluggish. The iceberg's strike shattered the illusion that Titanic was unsinkable, piercing through the ships steel and the human hubris and idiocracy.
As the icy water poured in, chaos overwhelmed what should have been an orderly evacuation. The ship’s crew lacked proper training, passengers were confused, and lifeboats were launched half-empty. Men begged to be saved, claiming they could row, while women and children, the supposed priority, were actually left to fend for themselves. Titanic's passengers found themselves abandoned not only by a sinking ship, but by the systemic failings of those meant to protect them. Of the 2,224 people on board, only about 706 to 724 survived (figures sadly vary), approximately 30 to 32 %. The survivors were primarily women and children from the first and second classes, as the "women and children first" protocol was more rigorously enforced, while some individuals from the “lower classes” also survived, though their chances were significantly lower. The tragedy laid bare not only the inadequacy of lifeboats but also the stark class disparities in access to safety. Inequality reigned supreme!
The survivors were eventually rescued by the RMS Carpathia, a British passenger liner operated by the Cunard Line. After receiving Titanic's distress signal, the Carpathia's captain, Arthur Rostron, immediately altered course and navigated through dangerous ice fields to reach the lifeboats. The Carpathia arrived approximately two hours after the Titanic had sunk, and its crew worked tirelessly to bring the survivors on board, providing them with blankets, medical care, and comfort. The heroic actions of the Carpathia's captain and his crew are credited with saving the lives of the 706 survivors. After being rescued, they were taken to New York City, with the Carpathia arriving there on April 18, 1912, three days after the sinking.
Safety Pioneers?
In the aftermath of the disaster, the survivors faced significant challenges as they tried to rebuild their lives. Many had lost family members, and friends. Many survivors suffered from trauma and survivor's guilt. A number of survivors, like Margaret Molly Brown (who became known as the Unsinkable Molly Brown), became advocates for improved maritime safety, while others avoided public attention, no doubt haunted by the memories of that night. The experiences of the survivors serve as a lasting reminder of the human cost of institutional failures and the devastation those failures have on those who put their trust in such systems.
Lessons for Today
The sinking of the Titanic remains an enduring monument to institutional arrogance. It was not merely the iceberg that sunk the ship, but the pride and hubris of those who believed they were beyond calamity. The British Board of Trade, the White Star Line, Captain Smith, all were complicit in cultivating an aura of invulnerability. Theirs was a fortress built on misplaced confidence and disregard for human vulnerability.
The lessons of the Titanic are something we should always keep in mind. It forces us to ask how many of today’s institutions, particularly those at the forefront of “State-of-the-Art” Artificial Intelligence, remain blindly assured of their infallibility, racing forward while ignoring the looming risks.
Today, the magnitude of advances with AI and the speed of those developments, must follow the "Titanic Cautionary Principle". As we advance in the development of AI, we must ask ourselves: Are we placing too much trust in the technology and the institutions developing it? Are we overlooking potential blind spots, much like the builders and operators of the Titanic? The cold truth remains: irrespective of human intent or the vastness of our technological achievements, institutional hubris and oversight happens.
In the podcast Conversations with Tyler, Christopher Kirchhoff, who led the 67-person Defense Innovation Unit X, which piloted flying cars and microsatellites in military missions and created a new acquisition pathway for technology acquisition by the Department of Defense, who was also the Director for Strategic Planning at the National Security Council and is an expert in the social impacts of technology, gave us this food thought:
“I got a chance this spring to work at anthropic in a policy residency working both on AI safety and AI of National Security and it was a short-term residency, I was only there for a few months but I am incredibly enchanted by generative AI and I cannot believe based on my time inside a Frontier Model lab what is just around the corner so I want to learn everything I possibly can about how to steer, democratize and make safe, this incredibly powerful new wave of Technology that's about to crash down upon us.”
In the same interview Tyler Cowen states that:
"...it will disrupt a lot of social relations." and warns "American leaders in a sense are too asleep to even see that."
We do need to ensure that AI development includes, not just adequate safeguards, but strong safety nets that protect society from the possible failures and impact of this powerful technology. Of course, we must carefully balance this with free market development. To quote Kirchoff, “we have to be very careful not to exert government control”.
The Titanic was a human disaster which could have been avoided, these lessons are as relevant today as they were on that fateful night. We face a conundrum: we must not sleepwalk into any societal disaster, ignoring the risks that lie ahead.
Note – I have not offered solutions, because I am not convinced that there are good ones in place yet. The EU AI Act, a risk based approach is a solid first step toward technological safety. BUT, as a society we do need to carefully consider AI risks and its societal impact, especially its impact on critical thinking, job obsolesce, the environment, education and a myriad of other factors for future posts.
Stay curious
dr Colin W.P. Lewis
[1] "Royal Mail Ship" or "Royal Mail Steamer." It was a designation given to ships that carried mail under contract to the British Royal Mail. The Titanic was called "RMS Titanic" because it was one of several ships contracted to carry mail between Europe and North America. This designation highlighted the ship's dual purpose: transporting passengers and carrying mail, which was a prestigious duty at the time.
Image created with AI (GPT4.0)