Billionaire Larry Ellison says a vast AI-fueled surveillance system can ensure 'citizens will be on their best behavior'

shish_mish@lemmy.world to Not The Onion@lemmy.world – 452 points –
Billionaire Larry Ellison says a vast AI-fueled surveillance system can ensure 'citizens will be on their best behavior'
businessinsider.com
75

Keep in mind that Larry Ellison is fundamentally incapable of caring whether or not "citizens will be on their best behavior." The only reason he would say a thing such as this is because he sees an opportunity to make money from such a system.

Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphising Larry Ellison. You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn, you stick your hand in there and it'll chop it off, the end. You don't think 'oh, the lawnmower hates me' -- lawnmower doesn't give a shit about you, lawnmower can't hate you. Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don't fall into that trap about Oracle.

I think this is great advice for billionaires in general.

You have to be extremely sick to become one.

Yeah, that would make any kind of political speech practically impossible. Activism? Nope, out of the question. Creative artistic expression? Better watch out for the thought police.

We don’t need “best behavior,” that would be so incredibly boring.

His out of touch suggestion is completely incompatible with democracy.

The United States already prosecutes many activists as terrorists, or at least tries to charge them. All this would do is turn that up to eleven.

I'm trying to think of which robot dystopia/apocalypse this most closely resembles.

Right? There are probably hundreds of novels theorizing about how this turns out. Most of them unflattering I would guess, based on however many I have read

No fictional dystopia needed. China already performs mass surveillance and has systems in place to enforce desirable behaviours in citizens. This is just another evolutionary phase.

I agree wholeheartedly Larry so let's start with monitoring the sex dungeon where you keep the abducted kids locked up, you fucking bootlicking Orwellian psychopath.

Never liked this guy. And Oracle DB has always kinda sucked.

And that’s their only “good” product.

The rest is utter garbageware, designed for one purpose: to check boxes on RFPs.

Java was nice for the time. Same with MySQL.

MySQL was acquired by Sun Microsystems, which was also the original developer of Java. Oracle acquired Sun. So I'd say any niceness there is in spite of, not because of, Oracle.

Also... Java's still pretty nice :-)

I take comfort in the fact that Oracle hasn't been able to release new products. They're basically a legal team wrapped around their existing software.

That said, fuck this guy.

The post above this one in my feed was from the onion: Guy Who Sucks At Being A Person Sees Great Potential In AI

This is the kind of shit Amazon drivers already have to put up with. Remember hearing about how their singing can alarm the AI driver facing camera watchdog? If they're not willing to go on strike to get rid of surveillance in the work place then it's all too likely the average citizen won't do anything about it either.

........what is wrong with singing in their car???

Them moving their mouth too much made the AI think they were distracted driving and would dock them for it.

Maybe a vast human being network can ensure billionaires stop existing. Let's do that one instead.

If those are your views on privacy, mister, then let's start by you giving everyone access to your personal messages, unedited or unrestricted.

Fuck this fascist! We need to eat them ASAP. Or just bury the useless flesh. Either way, they shouldn’t come back from this…

Dude. You have way more than enough money. Go enjoy some real life, doing whatever it is soulless husks enjoy doing. Leave the rest of us alone.

Billionaires become billionaires by suppression of the masses. This is on brand.

You can't enjoy anything but accumulating more money by the time you get to that point I think

Isn't this basically what china is right now? Where's all the tankie that would wanna defend him?

If this runs on Oracle we're all gonna be just fine. It's one of the slowest, clunkiest products ever made.

Who even is this?

Asshole billionaire founder of asshole company Oracle. For reference, they sell cloud solutions and AI shit. What he says is that he wouldn't mind a totalitarian surveillance regime of us peasants to make a quick buck.

Start by putting cameras in his house

Well he's a billionaire so he probably does have some already, what needs to be done is to make these accessible to the public and sell the data to private companies. Just to see how this fucks feels about it.

I know what Oracle is and what they do, never thought about what kind of asshole their founder was, though. I guess most big tech companies were either founded by assholes or bought by assholes (or both)...

You have to stomp faces to get to this kind of wealth, pretty much all billionaires have empathy issues, either from birth or acquired.

It's all fun and games until said system is used against you either by hackers, insider with mallicious intent or the goverment goverment.
Albeit said A.I systems could also be used to get rid of billionares by simply exposing tax loopholes, tracking illegal transactions and by finding answers from any leaked data which will be more plentiful when such systems gets in to place.

“The AI has long since exterminated black people, bars, cumin, and parks, yet it continues to recommend that we arrest anyone who purchases flavor aid and chicken. Barbecues, as we knew them, are as dead as the root of its prejudice against them. On the bright side, white people have never been more free to do cocaine, the economy booster™”

Relying on AI to provide a naughty list is a horrific idea.

Facebook proved that people are just as shitty when their identity is voluntarily public.

We literally need to start turning all billionaires into compost.

This guy read Foucault's discussion about the panopticon and took it as instructions. Ugh.

The panopticon was originally designed as a prison, so effectively Ellison is saying, "wouldn't the world be great if everyone were in prison?"

Good news, everyone! We've finally built the Torment Nexus from the famous book Don't Build the Torment Nexus.

We need a virus that only attacks and kills billionaires.

Lets target no empathy people, they are just suffering all their lives, and if smart enough shares that suffering with as many as possible.

NGL I did a double take tryna figure out why they used a picture of Tim Allen for that headline.

Yeah! Great! Let's start by surveil all those rich guys and their behavior. For ... let's say ... the next decade.

God, will someone just punch him already?

I imagine everyone said this about video cameras, turns out crime still happens. AI is only as good as the programmers who designed it.

Now, if the AI achieves self-awareness. Let's all hope the AI comes to the conclusion that billionaires are the true root of all evil.

Our ruling parties have seen over the course of the last 23 years that Americans are accepting of living under constant surveillance, so as dystopian as this is, Ellison's not proposing anything that is particularly outlandish. If you have any cash squared away, it might even be a good idea to research which companies are trying to get these government contracts and invest.