I spent two years working on autonomous ships at NASA JPL, primary on developing deep learning algorithms for ship detection and classification to obey maritime traffic rules (COLREGS), avoid obstacles, help with decision making, etc.
Regarding piracy, autonomy would cut down on costs a lot. Based on my understanding, besides cutting down on life-support costs and having extra room for more cargo, the ships would also be able to eliminate the cost of the armed guards that many have kept on their ships since the rise of piracy. That's one of the main reasons why we don't hear about piracy anymore [0]. With no controls on the ship, pirates wouldn't be able to take control.
Regarding piracy, autonomy would cut down on costs a lot. Based on my understanding, besides cutting down on life-support costs and having extra room for more cargo, the ships would also be able to eliminate the cost of the armed guards that many have kept on their ships since the rise of piracy. That's one of the main reasons why we don't hear about piracy anymore [0]. With no controls on the ship, pirates wouldn't be able to take control.
Note also that Rolls Royce is looking into drone ships (rather than full autonomy): https://www.rolls-royce.com/media/press-releases/yr-2016/pr-...
[0] http://www.marineinsight.com/marine-piracy-marine/18-anti-pi...