Larry Ellison – 'citizens will be on their best behavior' amid nonstop recording (fortune.com)

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison’s prediction that AI will “supervise” ubiquitous cameras and keep citizens “on their best behavior” has taken on new weight as Oracle pivots into a central AI infrastructure and national-security role. The company recently struck massive cloud deals — including a multiyear agreement with OpenAI reported at roughly $300 billion and participation in the Stargate data‑center buildout — and is widely expected to be part of the consortium acquiring TikTok’s U.S. business after an executive order cleared the path. U.S. officials say Oracle would oversee a re‑created TikTok recommendation algorithm and secure U.S. user data, putting the company in charge of both the compute backbone and algorithmic governance of one of the country’s largest video platforms. Technically, those moves underscore two converging trends: the industrial-scale need to process petabytes of video and the strategic value of recommender systems. Re‑implementing TikTok’s algorithm and operating new data centers requires massive compute, data migration, model replication/testing, and audit tools to demonstrate privacy and national‑security compliance. The implications are broad — from improved automated oversight of law‑enforcement footage and real‑time incident reporting to heightened concerns about surveillance, centralization of algorithmic control, and the governance mechanisms needed to ensure transparency, fairness and user privacy.