AI is on the verge of ushering in a new era of mass surveillance, says Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison, and his juggernaut is rip-roaring, ready to serve as the technological backbone for such AI applications.
Ellison made the comments near the end of an hour-long chat at the Oracle financial analyst meeting last week during a question and answer session in which he painted Oracle as the AI infrastructure player to beat in light of its recent deals with AWS and Microsoft.
Many companies, Ellison touted, build AI models at Oracle because of its "unique networking architecture," which dates back to the database era.
"AI is hot, and databases are not," he said, making Oracle's part of the puzzle less sexy, but no less important, at least according to the man himself - AI systems have to have well-organized data, or else they won't be that valuable. The fact that some of the biggest names in cloud computing (and Elon Musk's Grok) have turned to Oracle to run their AI infrastructure means it's clear that Oracle is doing something right, claimed now-CTO Ellison.
"If Elon and Satya [Nadella] want to pick us, that's a good sign - we have tech that's valuable and differentiated," Ellison said, adding: One of the ideal uses of that differentiated offering? Maximizing AI's pubic security capabilities.
Oracle: Your mass AI surveillance cloud platform
Combining the might of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and the capabilities of advanced AI, Ellison predicted a world of constant accountability for the Americans of tomorrow, where AI keeps everyone on their best behavior.
"The police will be on their best behavior because we're constantly watching and recording everything that's going on," Ellison told analysts. He described police body cameras that were constantly on, with no ability for officers to disable the feed to Oracle.
Even requesting privacy for a bathroom break or a meal only meant sections of recording would require a subpoena to view - not that the video feed was ever stopped. AI would be trained to monitor officer feeds for anything untoward, which Ellison said could prevent abuse of police power and save lives.
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"Every police officer is going to be supervised at all times," Ellison explained. "If there's a problem AI will report that problem to the appropriate person."
But Oracle doesn't just want a hand in keeping the cops accountable.
"Citizens will be on their best behavior because we're constantly recording and reporting," Ellison added, though it's not clear what he sees as the source of those recordings - police body cams or publicly placed security cameras.
"There are so many opportunities to exploit AI," he said.
The Oracle CTO also suggested that drones could be used to pursue police suspects instead of relying on patrol vehicle chases, and that satellite imagery of farms can be analyzed by AI to forecast crop yield and suggest ways to improve field conditions. Whatever it is, Ellison wants Oracle's share of that pie to keep growing regardless of the potential privacy implications.
We reached out to Oracle to get clarification about some of Ellison's statements, but haven't heard back. ®