When will human hydrographic activities be substituted by artificial intelligence? Admittedly, the title of this article, formulated as a question, is deliberately provocative. The first reaction of those who read it and are interested in hydrography for professional reasons will probably be ‘never’, or ‘not during my career’. Some may simply say: ‘wrong question’. If you read primarily non-technically orientated media, you get the impression that this technology can provide answers to almost all questions – especially those that humanity has never asked before. This seems unlikely to me, and it is therefore worth first of all systematically discussing the possibilities and limitations of the applicability of this new technological wizardry in order to then assess its usability in hydrography. I think that both the question and the possible answers first need to be clarified as to which areas of hydrographic activities will be affected by the use of artificial intelligence. One of the smartest conversations I have read on this topic so far was conducted by Lars Schiller, editor in chief of the German Hydrographic Society’s trade journal, with Alexander Reiterer from Fraunhofer IPM. You can either download the entire interview and have it translated by AI-driven software or follow my highly summarized interpretation here. One of Alexander Reiterer’s key statements for understanding the possibilities of AI is the following: AI is trained for a clear task, by humans. This is a very complex process in which algorithms are used that enable self-learning. For certain tasks, the machine is clearly superior to humans after this learning process. For example, in very lengthy and complex pattern-recognition tasks involving vast amounts of data and parameters, the capacity of an AI can be huge with the computing power available today. We cannot expand and upgrade the human brain at will. And: AI