Major issues of international laws for maritime autonomous vessels navigation

The article, based on the provisions of the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and other legal documents, analyzes current issues and future international legal regulation of the use of maritime autonomous surface ships (MASS), which can completely transform the field of shipping and international maritime transport in the near future. One of the key features is the widespread use of artificial intelligence (AI) in all spheres of public life. The problems raised in the work are structurally divided into three main groups. The first of them is associated with the anthropocentrism of the law of the “pre-digital era”, i.e. with its inability to work with other autonomous subjects other than people and their various forms of organization. The second is determined by the specific characteristics of the autonomous systems themselves, including their non-determinism and ability to self-learn. The third group is directly related to the legal support of cybernetic security of the marine autonomous or remotely controlled in the new conditions. The main result is that the problem of extending the application of international maritime law to the MASS cannot be solved by simply transferring their regulatory impact to new subjects (objects); artificial intelligence systems or autonomous ships themselves. Such redirection is impossible, since human and artificial intelligence use completely different decision-making algorithms.