Oracle co-founder and chairman Larry Ellison said governments should consolidate all national data for consumption by AI models, calling this step the “missing link” for them to take full advantage of the technology. From a report:
Fragmented sets of data about a population’s health, agriculture, infrastructure, procurement and borders should be unified into a single, secure database that can be accessed by AI models, Ellison said in an on-stage interview with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair at the World Government Summit in Dubai.
Countries with rich population data sets, such as the UK and United Arab Emirates, could cut costs and improve public services, particularly health care, with this approach, Ellison said. Upgrading government digital infrastructure could also help identify wastage and fraud, Ellison said. IT systems used by the US government are so primitive that it makes it difficult to identify “vast amounts of fraud,” he added, pointing to efforts by Elon Musk’s team at the Department of Government Efficiency to weed it out.
Reminder that Ellison is an 80 year old billionaire who wants to surveil all of us to keep us on our “best behavior.” Fuck this old and out of touch asshat.
“Citizens will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on,” Ellison said, describing what he sees as the benefits from automated oversight from AI and automated alerts for when crime takes place. "We’re going to have supervision”
Anyone who thinks this could ever be implemented in a way that respects peoples’ civil rights is delusional and/or lying. Ellison is not someone we should be listening to for advice on how society should function, whether it’s about stealing more intellectual property for useless AI crap or mass surveillance.
Reminder that Ellison’s daughter owns Annapurna and was so terrible that their entire publishing wing quit.