Larry Ellison predicts rise of the modern surveillance state (fortune.com)

Oracle founder Larry Ellison warned at a recent Financial Analyst Meeting that the world is moving toward a “modern surveillance state,” framing it as a business opportunity for Oracle to analyze real-time feeds from millions of cameras. He predicted pervasive recording and AI-driven reporting—saying citizens and even police officers will be constantly monitored and that AI will flag problematic behavior. His comments echo elements of China’s social‑credit approach and underscore a corporate interest in large‑scale video ingestion, facial recognition and automated incident detection; Oracle did not respond to follow‑up requests for clarification. The prediction matters to the AI/ML community because it foregrounds technical, ethical and regulatory tradeoffs in deploying real‑time video analytics at scale: streaming ingestion, multi-camera correlation, face ID, edge vs. cloud processing, and automated alerting. Those systems can increase accountability (bodycam and bystander footage helped convict Derek Chauvin and expose misconduct in other cases) but also enable mass surveillance, doxxing and social control. Ellison’s vision crystallizes a tension researchers and policymakers must address—how to balance benefits like faster incident detection and transparency against risks to civil liberties, bias in recognition models, and misuse by states or private platforms.