Summary

  • At the September 2024 Oracle financial meeting, the corporation’s founder Larry Ellison made comments about AI exploiting data, future automations, and mass surveillance.
  • A number of media articles covered Ellison’s more controversial comments.
  • “Citizens will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on” was the comment often quoted in those articles.
  • Boasting that Oracle database and IoT (internet of things) are the best in the world, Ellison commented on the value this will bring to training artificial intelligence (AI).
  • At the financial meeting, Larry Ellison spoke of how Amazon, Google, Oracle, and Microsoft are working on the same cloud for greater automation and predicts a future of giant nuclear-powered datacentres.
  • Articles published at Fortune and Ars Technica both mention ‘Big Brother’ in Orwell’s 1984 novel and China’s social credit system in the context of Ellison’s recent comments.
  • Oracle’s history of working with government agencies goes back to some of the corporation’s earliest projects and the corporation still provides services for governments in many different countries.
  • Larry Ellison’s talk (approximately 1 hour and 14 minutes) covers a wide range of topics including robotic automation, surveillance technology, police brutality, dinners with Elon Musk,  the use of AI in the health sector, computerised lockdown of schools, and that they are supplying police body cameras which are still recording even when police think they are on a private bathroom break (the last 20 minutes of the Q & A session contains more of the controversial comments).

Article details

 

Headline: Larry Ellison predicts rise of the modern surveillance state where ‘citizens will be on their best behavior’

Published on: 18 September 2024

Authored by: Christiaan Hetzner

Published by: Fortune

Link:

https://fortune.com/2024/09/17/oracle-larry-ellison-surveillance-state-police-ai/

 

Headline: Omnipresent AI cameras will ensure good behavior, says Larry Ellison

Published on: 17 September 2024

Authored by: Benj Edwards

Published by: Ars Technica

Link:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/09/omnipresent-ai-cameras-will-ensure-good-behavior-says-larry-ellison/#gsc.tab=0

 

Headline: Oracle’s Larry Ellison Is Now the World’s 3rd Richest Person Thanks to the A.I. Boom

Published on: 18 September 2024

Authored by: Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly

Published by: The Observer

Link:

https://observer.com/2024/09/oracle-larry-ellison-ai-arms-race/

 

Quotes

George Orwell’s 1984 warned of a future where Big Brother watches every move. Today, modern technology is making that vision a reality, and Oracle founder Larry Ellison—the world’s second-richest person—sees a growing opportunity for his company to help authorities analyse real-time data from millions of surveillance cameras. “Citizens will be on their best behavior, because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that is going on,” Ellison said in an hour-long Q&A during Oracle’s Financial Analyst Meeting last week.

Fortune reached out to Oracle for clarification, but officials did not respond.

The world Ellison described sounds eerily similar to China’s social credit system, which controls citizens’ behavior through a network of cameras using some of the world’s most advanced facial recognition software to surveil their populace.

Nevertheless, his prediction may already be here in a sense.

Christiaan Hetzner, Larry Ellison predicts rise of the modern surveillance state where ‘citizens will be on their best behavior’, Fortune, 18 September 2024

 

But for the time being, the billionaire appears to be firmly stationed on A.I.—and he has grand ambitions for the new technology. In addition to generative A.I.’s potential to help spot forest fires and identify agricultural output needs via drones, he lauded the ability of A.I.-enabled cameras to enhance surveillance while speaking at Oracle’s financial analyst meeting. “Citizens will be on their best behaviour because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on,” he noted. Police officers, meanwhile, will be supervised at all times, with body cameras prepared to alert the appropriate authorities of any misconduct. “The world is going to be a better place as we exploit these opportunities and take advantage of this great technology,” he added.

Larry Ellison as quoted in Oracle’s Larry Ellison Is Now the World’s 3rd Richest Person Thanks to the A.I. Boom, The Observer, 18 September 2024

 

China has been using automated systems (including AI) to surveil its citizens for years. In 2022, Reuters reported that Chinese firms had developed AI software to sort data collected on residents using a network of surveillance cameras deployed across cities and rural areas as part of China’s “sharp eyes” campaign from 2015 to 2020. This “one person, one file” technology reportedly organizes collected data on individual Chinese citizens, leading to what The Economic Times called a “road to digital totalitarianism.”

Benj Edwards, Omnipresent AI cameras will ensure good behavior, says Larry Ellison, 17 September 2024, Ars Technica