Bad

This must be fought by The People, in the courts, and Congress.

• Issue: February 14, 2025

Larry Ellison Pushes for AI-Powered National Data Centralization and Mass Surveillance

A centralized AI-powered surveillance system could give governments unprecedented control over citizen data.

• Didi Rankovic

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Oracle co-founder and the company’s executive chairman and chief technology officer Larry Ellison is trying to persuade governments to descend deep into AI-powered surveillance dystopia by centralizing the entirety of their national data in a single place.

And when he says everything should go into this “unified” database, Ellison means everything. That includes health-related data, such as diagnostic and genomic information, electronic health records, DNA, data on agriculture, climate, utility infrastructure…

Once in there, it would be used to train AI models, such as those developed by Oracle – Ellison shared with former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair during a panel at the World Governments Summit in Dubai.

As for why any government would do such a thing – his “sell” is that it would allow AI to be used to provide better services. But this time, he left out how this centralization would also represent an exceptional opportunity to “turbocharge” mass government surveillance, even though there is little doubt that many governments are hearing him loud and clear on that point as well.

In September, Ellison wasn’t so coy regarding this angle when he spoke in favor of introducing real-time population surveillance. And naturally, that would be done with Oracle’s machine learning tech.

“As long as countries will put their data – all of it – in a single place we can use AI to help manage the care of all of the patients and the population at large,” Ellison told Blair.

As over the top, as all this may sound, Ellison appears to figuratively and literally mean business: he revealed that his company is building a 2.2 gigabyte data center to train AI models and spending “between 50 and 100 billion dollars” on these endeavors.

And, he suggested that massive amounts of data would not be the only thing centralized in a handful of places, going forward – the same is true of the AI model training, because of the high price tag attached.

In other words, Ellison’s vision of the future is complete control over everyone’s data in the hands of governments and a select number of super-rich companies capable of building and running this infrastructure for them.

Ellison also told Blair about Oracle’s AI-powered biometric ID that’s currently used only to log into the company’s system:

“The computer recognizes you. It recognizes your voice. It might ask you to put your index finger on the return key. And we know, we’re absolutely certain it’s you. There’s no reason to enter a password.”