Co-founder of Oracle, Larry Ellison, who serves as the cloud giant's CTO, has been part of the tech industry's furniture for decades now. Looking ahead, he projects the rise of technologies such as AI, drones, and additional monitoring systems.

The modern surveillance state

Ellison's warning came during an hour-long Q&A at an Oracle financial analyst meeting in September 2024.

This world that Ellison describes revolves around AI technologies processing huge amounts of video footage from the explosion of cameras in the streets, cars, front doors, and even police officers. AI will, he added, automatically report issues that it detects while it's analyzing footage captured in real time.

With so much opportunity to scan and detect wrongdoing across society, and AI reducing the processing and decision-making burden, Ellison posited that citizens will, in kind, respond by adjusting their behavior. This vision is eerily similar to that George Orwell described in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which Big Brother oversaw the daily actions of citizens.

Wrangling with an AI-fueled dystopia

The movement against AI playing a role in surveillance is vast, with plenty of commentary and research identifying ways this is happening. There are, for example, concerns over the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) monitoring social media with AI used to scan and summarize findings.

Other reports suggest that big companies are engaging in workplace surveillance. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, for example, recently admitted on an employee call that AI is being used to study and process the day-to-day actions of employees to gather data to train future models and agents. It comes shortly after reports that the company will track clicks and keystrokes on devices.

Whether in the workplace — or society at large — the direction of travel for the last couple of decades has favored increased monitoring and surveillance, with Ellison clearly concerned that emerging technologies will simply add more fuel to this fire.

Keumars Afifi-Sabet is a freelance contributor for Tech Radar and the Technology Editor for Live Science. He has written for a variety of publications including ITPro, The Week Digital and ComputerActive. He has worked as a technology journalist for more than five years, having previously held the role of features editor with ITPro. In his previous role, he oversaw the commissioning and publishing of long form in areas including AI, cyber security, cloud computing and digital transformation.