This paper discusses the ongoing process of digitalization and automation in society referred to as the fourth industrial evolution. The ongoing technological transformation of industries have led to a decentralization of control, and as a result, fragmentation of work when tasks are distributed among several human and artificial actors in diverse locales and organizations. The aim is to use an “industry of the future”, in this case autonomous shipping, as an illustrative case to explore the ways cooperation changes when work is distributed between humans in a network of control rooms and autonomous vehicles. Taking the departure in an ongoing project of autonomous shipping in Norway as well as in classical CSCW studies on centers of coordination, we discuss how the decentralization of control rooms transforms the social and material conditions for cooperation, but also challenges for establishing cooperation between humans and autonomous vehicles. As a result, we propose that control room of the future will share characteristics with control rooms of the past, i.e., taking the form of hybrid spaces where both traditional practices and high-end technologies are at work. Although it is difficult to pinpoint how the relationship between human operators and autonomous vessels will manifest itself in future work practices, we find it likely to assume that the interaction with automation will give rise to novel forms of articulation work where new standards and norms of accountability and trust are negotiated and re-produced. Future studies need to analyse, in interactional detail, the ways in which humans interact with artificial agency to co-construct an understanding of the evolving situation. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.