alt.hn

6/2/2026 at 5:34:10 PM

Larry Ellison: "Citizens will be on their best behavior because we’re recording"

 https://www.techradar.com/pro/quote-of-the-day-by-oracle-co-founder-larry-ellison-citizens-will-be-on-their-best-behavior-because-were-constantly-recording-and-reporting-everything-that-is-going-on-a-dire-warning-on-the-erosion-of-privacy

by CharlesW

6/2/2026 at 6:19:13 PM

I think the really dangerous part here is not just “surveillance bad”.

It is that AI removes the labour cost that used to limit surveillance.

CCTV was already a problem, but someone still had to watch it, search it, interpret it, escalate it. AI changes that. It makes surveillance searchable, scalable and administratively useful. The shift is from “you may be observed” to “your behaviour can be continuously machine-interpreted”.

That changes the moral shape of the state.

A democracy can have police, courts, borders, audits, fraud detection, and public order. I don’t think the serious argument is that no one should ever be watched. The question is asymmetry.

A free society cannot survive if ordinary citizens become more transparent to the state and its contractors than the state is to them.

The principle should be:

privacy for persons, transparency for power.

Police bodycams should make police accountable. Procurement should be inspectable. Algorithmic decisions should have audit trails. Whistleblowers and journalists should be protected. Public systems should be legible to the public.

What worries me is not only some cartoon version of Orwell. It is the boring version: safety dashboards, risk scores, fraud detection, productivity analytics, immigration enforcement, “trust and safety”, compliance automation, procurement contracts.

The boot does not always arrive as a boot. Sometimes it arrives as infrastructure.

And the hard question is not whether surveillance can create order. It obviously can. So can a prison.

The question is whether it creates accountable power afterwards.

A panopticon may produce “best behaviour”, but only by turning citizens into managed subjects. I have been trying to understand this fetish for controlling people through coercion that seems so prevalent in certain new modern business contexts, like amazon warehouse workers and delivery employees.

The only thing it creates is resentment. Is that how you want to build a company or society on. Resentment?

by EastLondonCoder

6/2/2026 at 6:29:57 PM

> Is that how you want to build a company or society on. Resentment?

I think this misunderstands their goals. They don't care how society/a company is built. All they care about is that they are the one building it and that they are at the top of the hierarchy.

Just like with the startups and tech companies they built, they see speed as a critical advantage so that they can be the first-mover and establish a moat. Long-term viability and health is a distant secondary or even tertiary concern. If the panopticon and some weirdly neofeudal technofacist society can be built faster than something more egalitarian, then that neofeudal technofacist society is - from their perspective - better and that is what they will bias towards and build.

by joshAg

6/2/2026 at 6:29:18 PM

The panopticon concept from Bentham was interesting because even if there was only a small chance that you might be observed, at any given time, then people would act as if they were being observed. Even if they weren't.

We have had that kind of system, now, for just about everything. Not just from the Big Brother direction, but also the Little Brother direction. At any time, a mob of people might decide to pull up your old digital footprint and condemn you for it.

Likewise, even before AI, at any time the IRS could decide to audit your past tax filings, or data breaches could expose your personal secrets, or street camera can nab you for a traffic violation, or someone could decide to pull up surveillance footage and get you for something, and so on.

The exact degree of difference between the two systems is significant, but much of the marginal psychological burden of such things has already been paid by everyone living in industrial civilization. And, as with the panopticon, just the small chances of active monitoring already provided 80% of the sought-after result.

Indeed, that kind of condition is what people like Ted Kaczynski were so bothered by decades ago.

Those living in the epicenters of civilization, like those in the largest cities, have basically been under almost constant surveillance now for decades.

by nwah1

6/2/2026 at 9:47:28 PM

> A panopticon may produce “best behaviour”

This is not even a given. A panopticon tends to produce risk-aversion and metastasize Goodhart's Law. People do what they think they're expected to do and interpret vague rules in the most conservative way even if it's absurd/inefficient/immoral, or follow poorly drafted rules to the letter. There is a reason "work to rule" is a manner of labor strike.

> I have been trying to understand this fetish for controlling people through coercion that seems so prevalent in certain new modern business contexts, like amazon warehouse workers and delivery employees.

This tends to happen in rote unskilled jobs because they have to process however many packages per unit time and if workers spend 90% of each hour processing packages instead of 99.9% then they need 11 workers instead of 10. Even there it often doesn't work; results in high turnover or having to pay more to retain workers.

For the vast majority of jobs it doesn't even come close to working because the job isn't simplistic and uniform enough to have everything mapped out in advance. But some people have enough hubris to think they can run the bottom from the top.

by AnthonyMouse

6/2/2026 at 6:35:38 PM

Your comments have two standout points for me:

1. Boring Orwell: Continuous surveillance is already present in the form of cameras in streets, shops, schools, cars, buses, homes, etc. AI can and absolutely will be used to continuously monitor these feeds.

2. Accountable power: Surely you're joking?!

by testfoobar

6/2/2026 at 7:30:49 PM

If every violation gets captured hopefully we can have law enforcement and judges that can use their discretion to make sure the "spirit of the law" is what actually results in punishment. Or we fire 80% of them if an AI can outperform them.

By spirit of the law I mean: rolling a stop sign at 1am on a flat country road is not the same as rolling a stop sign in a busy parking lot.

by ericmcer

6/3/2026 at 1:45:46 PM

Unfortunately, history shows many, many examples of selective enforcement that are used to push racist agendas by the enforcers.

Also, I suspect that there will not be anywhere near enough judges to allow people to question the inevitable mistakes that are made if AI is involved. Arguably, most societies don't have enough judges to deal with simple matters such as speeding/parking tickets.

by ndsipa_pomu

6/2/2026 at 10:24:43 PM

Spirit of the law? lol. My sweet summer child.

1. No one is foregoing the revenue from even minor infractions.

2. There won’t be a human in the loop. You thought Judge Judy was bad? Try Judge AImy.

How do I know this? Having copped three speeding fines last year via speed cameras, two of which were for driving 43km/h in a 40 zone. One of which I disputed with dash-cam footage showing it was a brief overtaking acceleration when a truck came to a stop in an intersection. Outcome? “No. Speed camera never lies. But feel free to waste more time and money getting this before a human.”

by phs318u

6/2/2026 at 7:24:19 PM

> Algorithmic decisions should have audit trails.

I'm afraid it won’t help as much as we’d like. The algorithm might consider thousands of parameters all of which have scientifically been shown to correlate with some outcome.

A famous example is a denied credit application where one parameter is the battery level of your mobile.

A trail won’t help you decipher why the algorithm decided a particular action.

by lysium

6/3/2026 at 6:36:54 AM

There was a post from a guy that looked up fraud transactions in db. And every query he used, he explained in a plain terms. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48155212

If an algorithm can't be explained that way, I propose that it's a shit algorithm that shouldn't be used in production in places where its directly blocks people actions

by lesostep

6/2/2026 at 6:25:44 PM

It's essentially the TVtropes Fascist but Inefficient, but it takes out the grunt work.[1]

The other thing that comes to mind here is Brazil, the movie directed by Terry Gilliam - the inefficiency of the state is part of what makes it evil because it mostly doesn't care if it gets stuff wrong - I wonder how machine intelligence may change that.

[1] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FascistButIneffi...

by bobson381

6/2/2026 at 6:24:34 PM

Maybe not "you", but how motivated are you to be in control? Not as much as those who angle for the CEO and board chair roles, or to be kingmakers, or to run for various offices. And they very much tolerate being feared.

by quantified

6/2/2026 at 8:26:55 PM

Yes, I agree. But also: Surveillance bad.

by happytoexplain

6/2/2026 at 6:28:13 PM

Uuuugh. The AI smell is strong on this comment. Please use AI for loads of things, but also pretty-please keep it out of inter-human discussions.

by aiaiaiaiai57

6/2/2026 at 6:28:43 PM

This does not read as AI to me at all

by anamexis

6/2/2026 at 8:07:42 PM

It does. It's still a good text. It's also definitely a result of human-AI collaboration (to what extent - hard to say; could be AI edits in human-written text, could be a longer prompt and AI expanding it, something like that).

The it's-not-X-it's-Y formula is the most visible tell. It's overused, being used, I think, 3 times, with 2 being slightly less obvious. This-was-X-and-now-it's-Y is also overrepresented.

It's still not a bad comment. We can discuss it just fine. What we can't do now is assume this is entirely an EastLondonCoder's text, so we can't use it to form an opinion of that person (whether good or bad) based on its content (since we don't know how much of it comes from that person, and how much from the machine). Some will also form an opinion (good or bad) about the poster simply because they used AI.

That's an Internet discourse of 2026, in my experience. I wonder what's next.

by klibertp

6/2/2026 at 10:36:21 PM

Single sentence paragraphs for rhetorical emphasis. I count six of those. Abrupt or elliptical sentences, often with a melodramatic tone. Example: "AI changes that." "It obviously can. So can a prison." Inconsistencies one wouldn't expect a human to make: "fraud detection" is ok in paragraph 5; worrisome in paragraph 9. I'm not vehemently against using AI as a drafting tool, but if I were to do that, I would be inclined to signal that somehow to avoid the appearance of dissimulation; just as I would if I were paraphrasing another author. If the points are good, then good. If you didn't notice the AI tells, does it really matter? It's still intelligible discourse.

by ClearDay

6/2/2026 at 6:37:28 PM

I'm 99% certain it's AI. Lots of short sentences. Very short paragraphs. It's not X, it's Y.

by azan_

6/2/2026 at 9:03:52 PM

> I'm 99% certain it's AI. Lots of short sentences. Very short paragraphs. It's not X, it's Y.

Your reply meets said criteria.

by O1111OOO

6/2/2026 at 9:36:41 PM

Yes. It's not just a reply - it's a joke.

by azan_

6/2/2026 at 9:38:11 PM

I thought so but wasn't completely sure. Brilliant!

by O1111OOO

6/2/2026 at 6:41:47 PM

"shape"

by meatmanek

6/2/2026 at 7:00:26 PM

Yeah, such words are a giveaway.

Another:

It is not “this simplified, kindergarten-level explanation”, it is “this explicit, thoughtful one”

In this case I suspect the poster used GPT (looks like OpenAI) to generate the initial response and then edited it.

by slopdetector

6/2/2026 at 8:02:15 PM

Is there an actual quantitative check that says "AI or not AI"? I'm genuinely curious.

So far as I can tell, AI prose checking - at least vs the frontier models - has been little better than vibe-based. Which, well, that's just another way of saying Red doesn't like Blue. And we got enough of that.

by lopsotronic

6/2/2026 at 8:11:49 PM

> Is there an actual quantitative check that says "AI or not AI"? I'm genuinely curious.

There are plenty of them that will give you a number, Pangram is a commonly-used one. Of course, whether they actually work well is a different matter. In my experience they have a huge false positive rates. I haven't tested the inverse.

by phainopepla2

6/2/2026 at 6:52:28 PM

> Police bodycams should make police accountable.

on an often under reported note, police body cams have led to an increase in police brutality as opposed to a reduction.

https://prismreports.org/2024/07/16/complex-troubling-histor...

excellent book on the topic: https://thenewpress.org/books/copaganda/

by yesbut

6/2/2026 at 7:08:32 PM

"In the U.S., the number of civilians whom police have killed annually has only increased each year since the widespread adoption of body camera equipment,"

That is a near textbook case of abusing statistics. Those things are completely independent variables. Perhaps "civilians" (as opposed to what, military?) killed by police increased because crime increased. Or population increased. Or laws changed. Or bullets changed.

Why would we expect widespread adoption of bodycams to decrease the number of criminals shot and killed by police? That starts with the spurious assumption that the police are randomly shooting and killing citizens in droves without cause and bodycams would put a stop to it. As it turns out, this isn't happening, so bodycams have no influence on the variable.

There's no need to read the rest of that article if the authors are trying to secretly sell such a pejorative opinion.

I invite you to go watch a couple hundred bodycam vids on YouTube. It may change your perspective on what police deal with. What I see consistently, regardless of department, is police bending over backwards and using all kinds of non-lethal force, to the point of risking their own lives, before using lethal force. There are well-publicized exceptions but in the vast majority of cases, the officers are facing someone using lethal force against them.

by bananamogul

6/2/2026 at 7:39:46 PM

It's important to keep in mind which bodycam vids make it to YouTube and which don't. You are seeing videos selected for a purpose.

by mrhottakes

6/2/2026 at 9:16:41 PM

Anything that gets views; police being polite and brutal are both fair game from what I see.

by ChoGGi

6/2/2026 at 10:18:10 PM

Some of these videos are the result of FOIA requests. Please, make FOIA requests and post these videos where the police are acting so egregiously. We deserve to know the truth about this!

Some less than positive-for-police videos I've seen-

- a weak police officer doesn't take control of the situation and the officer standing behind the first one is shot and killed

- an officer, while chasing a suspect, tazes him as he exits the median grassy area and enters a lane of traffic. The suspect was killed by traffic.

- a forfeiture case where someone's life savings (cash) were confiscated without due process during a traffic stop

by a_conservative

6/2/2026 at 6:28:50 PM

People at large became surprisingly fine with heavy surveillance state. It’s not even in any election issue agenda, completely ignored by everyone.

Another unpredictable outcome of social media I guess.

Something about stalking people online and digital exhibitionism, pushed the Overton window of surveillance.

To people like me, who do not have such loud and transparent online presence, this is unsettling. I only now crash head first into modern mentality as it is starting to affect me.

I wonder how long will I be able to evade the databases. Up until now it has been not that hard as long as you have a lot of money, live analog life, pay in crypto/cash and avoid big cities.

by juleiie

6/2/2026 at 6:27:13 PM

Ellison was among several prominent tech billionaires and executives whose names were mentioned in the multi-million-page tranches of documents made public by the Department of Justice.

by downrightmike

6/2/2026 at 7:36:32 PM

Surely you will provide the context of those mentions for us to review? You won't just let us assume they are innocuous mentions like you intended. Right?

by slumberlust

6/2/2026 at 6:27:48 PM

Man, just write your own comments yourself, no need to use AI-generated ones. You are making good point but the twitter-AI-slop style makes it really annoying to read.

by azan_

6/2/2026 at 6:49:12 PM

> this fetish for controlling people through coercion that seems so prevalent in certain new modern business contexts, like amazon warehouse workers and delivery employees. The only thing it creates is resentment. Is that how you want to build a company or society on. Resentment?

"Resentment" is a bad-faith interpretation at what it creates. What it creates, and why you see so much of it, is a powerful mechanisms to automate routine business of management and extraction of value.

by james_marks

6/2/2026 at 7:37:53 PM

And that automated value extraction creates high levels of resentment. It's not bad faith, just accurate.

by mrhottakes

6/2/2026 at 6:55:51 PM

That is copied straight from an LLM.

Do folks make no attempt at humanizing their LLM outputs? Is that even worth doing?

I personally wish you guys would - the moment I realize I'm reading an LLM-generated comment, my interest immediately wanes and I stop reading.

by standardly

6/2/2026 at 7:08:12 PM

Hate that I'm biting on this, but this isn't constructive, whereas AI generated or not, the comment above is. It is the top one, it is succinct, and it articulates the point clearly.

You seem to lament AI and given the context of that comment, the author presumably does too. The world is moving faster and faster towards AI first so kicking an screaming "That's AI" will not help. AI generated noise sucks, nut this is not it. We're moving closer and closer to a self-censored, milquetoast internet. Don't bring down a person for putting themselves out there, instead build on their case or build one of your own if you disagree. Shitting on well articulated points only pushes them further out of common discourse. We are all strangers on the internet and owe each other nothing, including this feedback, so do with it what you will.

by pureliquidhw

6/2/2026 at 8:05:23 PM

I simply disagree. If I wanted an LLM's opinion, I would forego HN entirely and just use ChatGPT. I browse forums like this to get organic opinions from real people.

When I see someone post an LLM reply, it makes me wonder - is the reply synonymous with their actual opinion, only formatted better? Or are they attempting to disguise an LLM output as something of their own? The former I am much more OK with, but the latter irks me for reasons I haven't fully considered and you have me thinking about.

"Calling out" AI comments has felt like somewhat of a duty, heh, but maybe we've reached a point of no return. I still value a real, organic opinion, though, no matter how well an AI can summarize it.

by standardly

6/3/2026 at 2:34:05 PM

> If I wanted an LLM's opinion, I would forego HN entirely and just use ChatGPT.

We used to say "My google search is not your google search". I think we can say that OP's prompt is not your prompt.

by stackbutterflow

6/3/2026 at 5:21:59 AM

>When I see someone post an LLM reply, it makes me wonder

>but maybe we've reached a point of no return

So you're creating your own suffering by perceiving a duality that doesn't really matter.

by joquarky

6/3/2026 at 8:57:03 AM

It clearly matters to him, and perception is not really a choice.

Personally, I've grown somewhat allergic to "AI-isms", and I'd rather not be (this example is still somewhat acceptable though). I also don't understand how we haven't trained this particular, obnoxious writing style out of them by now...

by myrmidon

6/3/2026 at 1:14:01 PM

Agreed. And, I could have stated it simply:

It just annoys me.

I wouldn't consider this something that really matters to me, though. I'm not up in arms over it. It's not an insurmountable annoyance. It didn't ruin my day. (LOL, the other comment about "perceived duality"... It's really not that deep!)

I didn't know I was going against the grain, though. It seems folks here are perfectly fine with AI discourse. How do we even know when a user is real? I digress.

by standardly

6/2/2026 at 7:32:35 PM

[dead]

by smohare

6/2/2026 at 9:14:16 PM

Hacker News guidelines state

"Don't post generated comments or AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans. "

by ChoGGi

6/2/2026 at 9:07:22 PM

Alright, hit me: what are the tells that this is AI?

by brendoelfrendo

6/2/2026 at 5:51:09 PM

And of course, the best behavior will be the behavior that poses zero threat to the people in power. What a great future we have ahead of us, my colleagues.

by hootz

6/2/2026 at 7:44:20 PM

Congrats to those among us building this dystopia. It's not Larry Ellison coding these systems.

by sph

6/2/2026 at 8:42:58 PM

Look, I have exactly two options:

1) Me and my entire family starves to death

2) I make 600k per year building surveillance systems for whoever wants them (as long as they're aligned with Peter Thiels and/or government interests)

by justacrow

6/3/2026 at 2:45:27 AM

This post has an 80% chance of being satire, and 20% chance of being from someone who honestly thinks not being able to afford a new iPhone every six weeks is literally like starving to death. Honestly, I can't tell.

by pibaker

6/3/2026 at 7:08:28 AM

I want to believe that you got downvoted by the Oracle employees making 600k a year, rather than by people that couldn't tell you were being sarcastic.

by sph

6/2/2026 at 9:08:31 PM

> 2) I make 600k per year building surveillance systems for whoever wants them (as long as they're aligned with Peter Thiels and/or government interests)

"I was just doing my job. ... I was just following orders".

Got it.

by O1111OOO

6/2/2026 at 9:34:27 PM

3) The surveillance masters then take you or your family members, because eventually you (or they) go against their interests.

by hckrme

6/2/2026 at 9:30:06 PM

> Me and my entire family starves to death

Patrick Star, in response to SpongeBob asking him to refrain from eating a candy bar, following a closeup pan of Patrick's extremely overweight body, "what do you want me to do, starve???"

Something children can understand the humor in. Being used to excuse marching us into totalitarian dystopia.

by potsandpans

6/2/2026 at 8:58:31 PM

or find another job

by nightshift1

6/3/2026 at 11:52:00 AM

I’m reminded of the several stories these past months about social media comments and police and incarceration. Attack on the First Amendment.

Public surveillance is an attack on the Fourth Amendment.

by xtiansimon

6/2/2026 at 6:50:08 PM

Of course recordings are to be used against those that threaten the people in power, while those in power enjoy a cone of silence. Same as it ever was.

Power is silencing other people. Follows from the problem of coordinated action. Foundation of asymmetric law enforcement, a cornerstone of tyranny. Even in a society ostensibly governed by the "rule of law".

What's new is how concentrated the reins of power have become. Paradoxically, could lead to a period of major instability. The year of four emperors.

by fatherzine

6/3/2026 at 8:04:29 AM

Fear works only if delivered occasionally in byte sized quantities, too much of it and people not only stop fearing, they will also likely be indifferent to it, worse case even out right rebel.

If you had a weapon which is powerful, you better use it sparingly. Fear of the weapon is more important than the weapon itself.

by kamaal

6/2/2026 at 5:58:59 PM

That is kinda what is going on in China.

by ekianjo

6/2/2026 at 6:17:49 PM

And that's what the Larry Ellisons of the world want.

One of the bigger lies ever told is that free-market economies help democratize nations. They don't. If they did, we would have made massive investments in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Marxist-Leninist governments there. Instead we decided to invest in China and, later, Vietnam, among others. These are two very non-democratic nations.

Why did we do that, especially after the Tiananmen Square Massacre? Because it better fit the needs of capital. The last thing they wanted was to set up shop in a bunch of countries where the people had organized against authoritarian regimes for change. If they can get rid of the likes of Ceaușescu and Honecker despite their brutality, they could certainly do things like strike for better working conditions and a greater share of their employers' earnings.

Ellison's just another in a long line of guys with far too much money and far too little empathy. If you get out-of-line in a way that financially or politically inconveniences him, he wants you dealt with as severely as possible. China does that, and now he wants that in the US and other Western countries.

by lenerdenator

6/2/2026 at 6:40:37 PM

“ far too much money and far too little empathy”

There is the old video about the mistake of anthropomorphizing Ellison. You don’t get angry at a lawn mower either when you stick your hand into it.

by vjvjvjvjghv

6/2/2026 at 8:43:28 PM

> mistake of anthropomorphizing Ellison

That's the problem: we take that story and use it as an excuse to act like he's not a human. "Oh, ol' Larry, he's just a lawnmower". No, he's a person, one who doesn't get enough in the way of negative consequences for the harm he brings to society.

My former employer was bought out by Oracle. I didn't stick my hand in the lawn mower, the lawn mower drove over my hand.

by lenerdenator

6/2/2026 at 8:34:20 PM

According to GPT, Poland (my pick because its GDP per cap is about the average for the former Warsaw Pact) received about $10,000 per person in foreign direct investment in recent years whereas during the same period, China received only about $1,900 per person.

by hollerith

6/2/2026 at 8:40:50 PM

> in recent years

How about 25-35 years ago when the wave of globalization truly hit?

by lenerdenator

6/2/2026 at 8:56:48 PM

You could look it up yourself. The figures I gave are the total current value of equities (stocks) held by foreign investors (divided by population). Since the value was zero in Poland in 1989 and very very low in China in 1989, GPT thought this would be a good way to estimate cumulative investment from then to now, but GPT also said there are figures available for investment inflows per year going back to 1989 that it could add up if I asked, but it guessed that such a calculation would only show investment into Poland in an even more comparatively favorable light.

https://chatgpt.com/share/6a1f4622-aea4-83e8-838a-0c3ac69b26...

by hollerith

6/2/2026 at 9:19:13 PM

>GPT thought

No it didn’t

by jrflowers

6/2/2026 at 8:16:23 PM

> They don't. If they did, we would have made massive investments in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Marxist-Leninist governments there.

Ummm, what? Have you been to Eastern Europe lately (minus Ukraine, Belarus and Russia)? They're basically the west, except cleaner and less crime-ridden.

by dismalaf

6/3/2026 at 4:49:25 AM

That's the wrong takeaway from the post, and I think you know it.

Imagine what those countries would be like if they'd received the investment that the Chinese did 35 years ago.

by lenerdenator

6/3/2026 at 12:25:28 PM

Those countries are all significantly richer per capita than China. Especially somewhere like Czechia, which has already passed several Western European countries in wealth.

How much richer do you think Czechia and Poland would be if they received more FDI in the 90's versus the 00's?

They received way higher investment per person than China did as well.

Also, China has some natural advantages, like being able to employ a ton of ultra cheap labour to engage in nation building projects. While the appearance of China is that of a rich country, they remain significantly poorer per capita than Europe.

by dismalaf

6/2/2026 at 6:21:24 PM

Except China has a well defined culture and millenia of experience with this and has learned how to have an autocratic society that still somewhat serves its people (until it doesn't). The US has been captured by a foreign power that has no interest in the welfare of the people so the expectation is that an autocratic society would be much worse in the US.

by colordrops

6/2/2026 at 6:38:47 PM

They don’t have millennia of experience with a surveillance state. But so far people are accepting it because their economic situation is generally improving. And crime is low. It may change once they have reached the same level of prosperity as the West and growth slows.

by vjvjvjvjghv

6/2/2026 at 7:28:59 PM

Uh, are you sure about that claim regarding surveillance over human history? Just because the technology has advanced does not entail the methods or concepts are novel. Quite the contrary in my view: the modern versions are natural evolutions of long traditions and customs. Having “rats” and “moles” reporting on behavior is, I mean, it predates written records of I’m not mistaken.

by 6stringmerc

6/2/2026 at 10:58:31 PM

Today is a totally different scale. The German stasi needed a huge amount of people to handle all the incoming data and a lot of it fell through anyways l. Today you just throw a lot of compute at it and nothing can escape.

Yes you always had people snitching on each other but it was inefficient and hard to centralize. Today is different.

by vjvjvjvjghv

6/2/2026 at 7:03:06 PM

> The US has been captured by a foreign power that has no interest in the welfare of the people

Huh?

by jr3592

6/2/2026 at 9:15:42 PM

How is it relevant?

"oh yeah we're developing something super fucked up but you know what the problem is? cHiNA", every single fucking time

And I bet all of you clowns wouldn't even be able to name three living Chinese people. The greatest threat to the west right now, and especially the US, is the American government, not China

by toasty228

6/2/2026 at 5:58:01 PM

It's subjective. When I was a kid, "best behavior" didn't include assaulting law enforcement and smearing feces on the walls of Congress, but these days that behavior is acceptable, even officially celebrated.

by jimt1234

6/2/2026 at 6:03:36 PM

Somebody has to provide feedback loop and back pressure, so yes, celebrated and needed it is

by Muromec

6/2/2026 at 6:02:37 PM

apparently it will get you elected.

by rolph

6/2/2026 at 6:57:40 PM

Somewhat of a clickbait headline. He used "Citizens" in contrast to police, in a discussion about body cameras:

>Another thing: body cameras, we completely redesigned body cameras. [...] Remember this terrible case in Memphis where the 5 police officers basically beat to death another citizen in Memphis, well that can't happen because it would be on TV at headquarters, everyone would see it, your body cams would be transmitting that. The police would be on their best behavior, because we're constantly recording and reporting everything that's going on, citizens would be on their best behavior, because we're constantly recording and reporting everything that's going on.

I'm not a fan of surveillance, but this article seems weird. The entire article, including the headline, consisting of a single quote, and without adding any context. A charitable interpretation would be that "citizens would be on their best behavior with police, because they know police can check the footage." I'm not necessarily advocating for charitable interpretations, but when you don't even provide the full sentence of the quote, you are not even allowing the reader to attempt to draw their own conclusion.

https://www.oracle.com/events/financial-analyst-meeting-2024... 1:10:03

by throw1113

6/2/2026 at 6:33:23 PM

Bangladesh is one of the best example of it.

People usually don't want to follow traffic laws on road. Now that we have AI camera recording and AI fine system, people try their best to follow traffic laws. We are becoming Japan following traffic laws in certain areas.

Police usually were scared to fine million dollars cars (because the car owner might be part of something higher power and they could lose their job). Now they gossip on roadside and let AI do it's job.

To HN people surveillance is scarry. But to us, surveillance is blessings.

by f-serif

6/2/2026 at 6:55:14 PM

Oh wow I went and looked that up after reading your comment. Launched less than a month ago! Incredible that you're seeing such impact already

by mhotchen

6/2/2026 at 7:55:03 PM

Yay lazy cops who never did their jobs anyway??

by downrightmike

6/2/2026 at 7:22:56 PM

Yet it is inevitable that people that are "part of something higher power" will abuse this system for various reasons that have nothing to do with traffic. No thanks. Slippery slopes abound.

by stronglikedan

6/2/2026 at 7:33:42 PM

Maybe, maybe not. South Asia has a history of very weak government and I'm not sure it will ever, culturally, be able to stomach something stronger. From a Western perspective having experienced authoritarian states, it's understandable to be more hesitant but South Asia has just historically had very few rulers that rule through heavy-handed edict.

by Karrot_Kream

6/2/2026 at 6:53:53 PM

Where does it end? What if it hallucinates you robbing an old lady but you just walked past her? Have fun getting swarmed and dragged away. Etc. when will it be used to frame political dissidents?

by greenhearth

6/3/2026 at 12:23:11 PM

Bangladesh is interesting because of serious support for automated anti-blasphemy.

by enoint

6/2/2026 at 7:30:16 PM

What AI have to do with this? Traffic cameras have been arround since 1834

by vdfs

6/2/2026 at 11:12:31 PM

The subtlety I rarely see discussed is that:

- privacy is fantastic in a society full of good people

- surveillance is the best defence against shit people

by anal_reactor

6/2/2026 at 11:22:19 PM

The problem is conditions are the main reason for shit people. so its kind of a chicken and the egg problem. Its a both and problem.

by trinsic2

6/3/2026 at 6:21:20 AM

Unfortunately, this is the truth.

I want surveillance cameras everywhere except my home (We have American surveillance at home :D ).

I don't mind surveillance + Dystopian Sci-fi movie like automatic action.

6000 childrens were raped in just first 3 months of 2026 in Bangladesh. This is just one example how bad the situation is.

AI traffic cameras proved, how civilized we can be, with proper treatment.

by f-serif

6/3/2026 at 1:48:55 PM

Arguably, the shittest people are the ones pushing the surveillance, whilst making a big deal about how minor crimes are destroying us, rather than the billionaires destroying democracy.

by ndsipa_pomu

6/2/2026 at 6:51:40 PM

[flagged]

by kys11

6/2/2026 at 5:59:20 PM

Larry should be a good example and publicize all his communication.

Pretty sure he is on his best behavior all the time.

by Yokohiii

6/2/2026 at 6:11:41 PM

Even if he did, the Epstein class already provided that they will get away with everything so what would be the point.

by jasonvorhe

6/3/2026 at 12:59:54 PM

That’s kind of an incredible point.

We know what a bunch of these people did, or at least tolerated being done and looked the other way.

It’s public information.

Nothing happens. We even re-elect them. People don’t care.

by api

6/2/2026 at 6:58:34 PM

They both own private islands. I'd like to see surveillance of Lanai, you know, for security.

by gosub100

6/2/2026 at 5:55:36 PM

If anyone managed to stick around through the later, lesser seasons of HBO’s Westworld, they were rewarded with a shockingly plausible view of the world Ellison is describing.

And at a time when most of the computing technology required still seemed like sci-fi. I remember kind of chuckling at the idea that the machine intelligence had made and saved a recording of a random conversation Aaron Paul’s character had with his mother in a diner a decade prior.

I have never been a privacy zealot, but it seems inevitable barring major political action that the panopticon will emerge comprehensive, actionable, and cheap.

by twoodfin

6/2/2026 at 6:21:14 PM

You mean, you have not created a meet with the relative who could only join remotely and did not transcribe it for the relatives who could not attend? I am shocked /j

by prerok

6/2/2026 at 6:41:22 PM

It’s not so much that the recording was made. CCTV has been pervasive in the UK for decades.

It’s that the scalable design & implementation of LLMs & agentic systems has made it plausible to automatically annotate, index, and ultimately extract “value” from keeping that recording around indefinitely.

That’s the necessary cornerstone to make it worth collecting in the first place.

by twoodfin

6/2/2026 at 6:03:10 PM

I think when we look back in 10-20 years, mass nearly universal surveillance will be seen as one of the largest social impacts of AI, or perhaps the largest.

We have barely scratched the surface, and I don't think most people have thought it through.

I guess I appreciate Ellison is educating people about what's going on...

by jrochkind1

6/2/2026 at 6:19:55 PM

Yeah, LLMs will enable big tech to expand the full surveillance from the online world to the real world, consequently monitoring all aspects of theirs lives.

It's likely gonna take a decade or so for things to become obvious to everyone, just like it took a decade for people to understand the cost of eg. Facebook

by ffsm8

6/2/2026 at 7:29:18 PM

the classic

    "Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing 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."
— Bryan Cantrill

at about 34-39 minutes in:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=2308s]

by tejtm

6/2/2026 at 8:36:28 PM

I get a chuckle out of that quote like the rest of us, but what I don't like about the metaphor is that the lawnmower has no agency and thus bears no responsibility for the damage it causes, whereas Larry Ellison does.

by atmavatar

6/2/2026 at 10:54:25 PM

Clearly you have already fallen into the trap

by shepherdjerred

6/3/2026 at 8:03:39 AM

Both can be true:

It may not be worthy to question Oracle and Larry motives - it's money, at the cost of anything else (although his pro Israel stance may unveil some other ideology too).

But it's worthy to say they should be held accountable for the scrap they do. Unless we grow so cynical to think the system is deeply rotten and cannot be changed - which is a valid feeling to have given all ongoing events, but there's also some glimmers of hope here and there that are gaining traction.

by pnt12

6/2/2026 at 6:31:13 PM

Nvidia has been marketing "smart cities" for years. I've mentioned it several times but it never gets traction. If you think the AI build out is about consumer benefits you're an idiot. It's about control. AI is going to cement the power structures of the world and give authorities powers they've dreamed of since antiquity. It's about surveillance, manipulation and deception.

I work making AI shovels. I benefit a tiny bit from all this but know it's just a small crumb in exchange for the buffet of freedom.

by 01100011

6/2/2026 at 6:01:16 PM

Is Larry confessing that he's not in his best behavior whenever he's not being recorded?

by ikonoklast

6/2/2026 at 6:11:08 PM

Most people are not, indeed. So this is the crux of religion: the "god" watches you, and will punish or reward you. Now social media and governments takes over that role.

by unglaublich

6/2/2026 at 6:12:50 PM

[flagged]

by jasonvorhe

6/2/2026 at 9:58:57 PM

Let me just add one interesting layer:

The current experiment in São Paulo, 8k+ cameras were added to the city with the same justification: security.

But, at least for smartphones robberies, the results are not obvious: on an average of 24 smartphones stolen every hour[1] in one neighborhood (Pinheiros is a big "tech" area).

I just want to point this out because this premise of more recording = more security = more behavior is not necessarily true.

[1] https://g1.globo.com/sp/sao-paulo/noticia/2026/05/21/cameras...

by jeanlucas

6/2/2026 at 6:51:36 PM

I believe surveillance can only work in society at a very small scale.

Surveillance == Information == Power.

Who then, manages the surveillance? You? Me? A government?

How do I trust them?

*Trust* is the fundamental problem with surveillance.

An innocent person was killed on a street. Surveillance camera on every corner of the street would've easily caught the murderer.

Who manages the recording? An individual? Entity? A government? How do I know they aren't face-tagging and selling the data?

It's always about trust.

An interesting case to consider is Seoul, South Korea which actually has cameras almost on very corner of the street. In my view, general population prefers streets recorded to avoid aforementioned situation, and it can only work if people have trust in the government. In the US contrary, my view is that the disconnect between the government and the people are too wide to have such trust.

by jameson

6/2/2026 at 6:42:05 PM

Be careful what you wish for Larry. If I may point to the examples of Fritz Thyssen, Hugo Junkers, Alfried Krupp...

There are many examples of succesful clever mega-wealthy industrialists who really thought they were above the fray, had it all figured out, and could push all the levers to their advantage.

by polotics

6/2/2026 at 9:10:11 PM

What happened then?

by sarabande

6/2/2026 at 6:35:09 PM

It's not the recording that matters, it's the enforcement. In PRC, you get your jaywalking mugshot on the intersection jumbotron, that social humiliation is enough to get people in line and establish public order. I wager shameless (individualistic) Americans would troll such methods, i.e. it would be counter productive in US cultural contexts... which is bleak because it means would need even harsher big brother enforcement methods to deter. Considering Chinese aunties fisty cuff with cops on the street, in US they'd get ventilated - the kind of shenanigans US LE would have to pull to enforce best behavior compliance is going to be much more violent.

by maxglute

6/2/2026 at 6:47:52 PM

I don't think jaywalking deterrence is what society is currently in need of.

by willis936

6/2/2026 at 6:49:33 PM

[dead]

by cindyllm

6/2/2026 at 6:16:58 PM

It is often commented how people who know they are recorded behave a certain way what is not commented on is how people who know they are recording other people behave. When you see your screen and you know you are recording them it creates this "power trip" it's feeling some of us know and love, but when we truly know it we don't love it anymore it's almost like a drug the high feels good the consequences are for others but that little guilt that lingers we don't like that. Now scale it at the size of an organization, the power trip with other people feel even more better, and the consequences ... well

by mainecoder

6/3/2026 at 2:23:55 PM

I dont get it-- the article was written 2 days ago, but the speech was in 2024-- why wait 2 years? What are his latest views?

by shantnutiwari

6/2/2026 at 6:19:04 PM

China, but we don't get the high speed rail.

by platinumrad

6/3/2026 at 10:30:31 AM

Let's record Larry Ellison then. He is not showing his best behavior lately. Does anyone already track his private jet or private yacht?

by amai

6/2/2026 at 6:36:07 PM

The "Who's your ideal dinner companion (deceased or alive)?" survey at the end is icing on this cake.

I honestly think I'd rather go hungry at this point.

by peteforde

6/2/2026 at 6:22:08 PM

One thing I would like clarified is whether he is endorsing that future or just making a neutral prediction on what the state of surveillance will likely be.

by spider-mario

6/2/2026 at 6:16:41 PM

If they were just recording and it required human labor to interpret it would merely be a traditional regime of totalitarian repression. But this tech allows real time interpretation. Imagine that a stalwart ideologue gets to decide what behavior constitutes hate, and to dispatch enforcement before you can finish rolling your eyes. This is what makes me fear Ilya Sutskever's warning of an infinitely stable dictatorship. It's not clear that gravity well can be escaped.

by delichon

6/2/2026 at 10:38:28 PM

> the fact that the inmates cannot know when they are being watched motivates them to act as though they are all being watched at all times.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon

by smarm52

6/2/2026 at 6:53:12 PM

Anybody that advocates like this should be the first to sign up for 24x7x365 monitoring. That also includes all their family.

by sys_64738

6/2/2026 at 9:09:40 PM

Everytime someone like this opens his mouth I look up their year of birth. He's 82 already. That calms me. And I wholeheartedly hope that there won't really be life prolonging biotech. I like a merciful natural death. It's the ultimative emergency fix for gerontocracies.

by GuestFAUniverse

6/3/2026 at 5:20:02 AM

That does not safe us from the young generation of the "fentanyl laced urin" Andreessen, "women should not vote" Thiel, "humans are NPCs" Musk. I have no idea how they educate their children, but if David Ellison is any parameter to go by, there will be no fix, just emergency.

by frm88

6/3/2026 at 2:51:34 AM

His son is just as bad or worse, though, and is well-positioned to pick up where Lawnmower Larry leaves off.

by NoGravitas

6/2/2026 at 7:04:44 PM

There is another stance which I feel is often overlooked in these discussions, and it is the absolutist 100% pro-“record all the things” realm, which is maybe not as obvious as it may seem at first - but is equally important to protect.

There shouldn’t be a secret surveillance apparatus.

But there should also be a massive human archive of recordings, accessible to all, forever.

Like, I legitimately think beyond the voyeur/exhibition equation, there is a service which governments could be providing to their citizens.

If the NSA is going to copy everything, give me access to my data. I can operate as a responsible citizen of the state, if I have it giving me a metric lifetime of storage.

There are many, many applications where it would actually be fine to have an efficient, well-financed organization, taking care of my personal, private data - properly, standardly, safely - like all the other services it provides citizenry. Standard encryption which allows me to broker my data with third parties, etc.

I’d be a lot less resistant to the surveillance state - of any nature, not just governmental - if it would at least give me access to my data.

Besides which, there are many great reasons to just always be recording.

by MomsAVoxell

6/3/2026 at 2:37:25 AM

They can't arrest all of us.

by RajT88

6/2/2026 at 6:43:26 PM

"We" is a very telling way to say that, in the sense that he, a citizen, seems to think he is above such systems. He's not wrong, sadly.

by dannersy

6/2/2026 at 6:04:37 PM

To be charitable to Ellison, it worked well in China.

by speak_plainly

6/2/2026 at 6:20:12 PM

Somehow, we're going to end up with all of the downsides and none of the upsides.

by platinumrad

6/3/2026 at 4:29:19 AM

No connection at all between this and the lie-flat and extremely low birth rate?

by polotics

6/2/2026 at 6:19:39 PM

It worked well in China because the Larry Ellisons of 35 years ago made sure the CCP was rewarded for keeping the rank-and-file in line and working instead of doing things like organizing for better working conditions or agitating for political change.

by lenerdenator

6/3/2026 at 10:37:26 AM

And in Russia

by amai

6/2/2026 at 6:11:27 PM

Being charitable to Larry Ellison is one of those things one cannot physically do, like being entertaining to a dead whale.

by scrollaway

6/3/2026 at 4:03:47 AM

And who will record them? We should have their recordings too right?

by hattimaTim

6/2/2026 at 5:51:26 PM

I'm 100% sure a man like him, with lots of money, will have "interesting" life. The fact that he's willing to be recorded, is he an exhibitionist?

Oh wait, he's exempted?

by wiradikusuma

6/2/2026 at 6:11:52 PM

Lol like EU chat control: politicians vote in favor, and politicians are excluded.

by unglaublich

6/3/2026 at 8:41:03 AM

You first, Larry, you first.

by anotherevan

6/2/2026 at 6:03:11 PM

"best behaviour" doing a lot of work here. Best as defined by the oppressor of course.

by Patrax

6/2/2026 at 6:36:34 PM

He will retreat on his Hawaiian island and obviously nobody will watch him there.

by vjvjvjvjghv

6/2/2026 at 7:11:06 PM

Why most media uses those 30 year old photos of Mr. Elison instead of current ones?

by elzbardico

6/2/2026 at 6:42:45 PM

Just yesterday, I was accosted in a public space by an individual that immediately provoked an aggressive confrontation, falsely claiming that I had invaded their personal space. After that initial accusation, they whipped out a pair of smart glasses and begin recording the conversation. It was not immediately obvious that they were recording, even though I am familiar with such devices. Their devive presumably recorded audio (otherwise what’s the point?), and that is a class A misdemeanor in my state. Of course, that presumes that the police would actually bother to enforce that law in the first place.

It seemed clear to me that the individual was trying to provoke a confrontation, as they framed it in such a way that they were justifying their actions in advance. Much like a bully will tell on onlookers lies to justify the beating they’re giving.

And that’s a problem with panoptic on surveillance, they will edit and frame footage to produce whatever narrative they want to promote. This goes for both state and individual actors. Context is King, and when only one side can provide and control the context, lies can be passed as truth with very little effort.

by voakbasda

6/2/2026 at 7:17:41 PM

In which state is that a class A misdemeanor? In some states it's a crime to record phone calls or other private conversations without all-party consent, but I wasn't aware that it was a crime to record a conversation in public anywhere.

I hike in Oregon and I've seen bodycams becoming increasingly common. I don't think that's a bad thing.

by bananamogul

6/2/2026 at 9:10:12 PM

Oh yeah, lawnmower man is the paragon of humanity.

by ChoGGi

6/2/2026 at 6:08:43 PM

Sounds pretty bad, but what’s the context? We should be skeptical of a quote out of context with some dogpile parallels without any other context. When did he say it? Where did he say it?

by doitLP

6/2/2026 at 8:40:44 PM

Does this at all sound out of character for him?

by platevoltage

6/2/2026 at 7:18:05 PM

Did you not read the article?

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

by snake42

6/2/2026 at 6:54:05 PM

If this really happens, people will rebel

by Duplicake

6/3/2026 at 10:37:57 AM

Like in China or Russia?

by amai

6/2/2026 at 9:03:22 PM

The CIA has extensive experience in undermining, neutering, diverting and decapitation all sorts of movements.

by morkalork

6/2/2026 at 6:05:26 PM

Reject Larry Ellison from civilization.

by happytoexplain

6/2/2026 at 6:15:50 PM

Reject Larry Ellison, embrace ...?

by selimthegrim

6/2/2026 at 8:25:58 PM

Humanity.

by happytoexplain

6/2/2026 at 6:12:01 PM

and musk, and orange turd, and zuck.

by sirbutters

6/2/2026 at 10:09:01 PM

We need to separate the conversation. Most people operate in good faith. 99% of the population of SF would never kick in a car window and steal a laptop. But a handful of people is all it takes.

We should 100% surveil, track, arrest and prosecute those people. Painting everyone with the same brush is never correct.

Find the problem people and deal with them. Hopefully in a way that teaches them not to be problem people. And failing that lock them up so we don’t have to deal with their bullshit.

by tim-tday

6/2/2026 at 5:58:02 PM

What really gets to me is how big tech isn't even pretending anymore to serve society. They clearly feel superior to the rest of us and entitled to rule.

by shawnhermans

6/2/2026 at 6:18:57 PM

Bryan Cantrill warns, "Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing 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' -- the lawnmower doesn't give a shit about you, the lawnmower can't hate you. Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don't fall into that trap about Oracle.":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=1981s

by breve

6/2/2026 at 7:05:41 PM

While that's pithy, I think it's also incorrect, because it implies that Oracle / Ellison is controllable by us, in the same way a tool / lawnmower is. That's absolutely not true. It has its own motivations that are best-case neutral to our goals.

It might be better to think of ourselves as individual fish in a school of fishes, and Oracle is the boat with a mile long dragnet. It doesn't care about the individual fish; it's not worth it's time to consider us individually. It's thinking in terms of tonnage.

by hex4def6

6/2/2026 at 10:54:02 PM

He also said later:

> For a while, I tried not going into Nazi allegory when talking about Oracle, but I actually think it does a disservice to not go into Nazi allegory because if I don't use Nazi allegory when referring to Oracle, there are some critical understanding that I have left on the table. There's an element of the story you can't possibly understand. If you had to explain the Nazis to someone who had never heard of World War 2, but was an Oracle customer, there's a very good chance that you would actually explain the Nazis in Oracle allegory. So, it's like: "Really, wow, a whole country?" "Yes, Larry Ellison has an entire country." "Oh my god, the humanity! The license audits!" "Yes, we should talk to Poland about it, it was bad."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79fvDDPaIoY&t=1440s

by soraminazuki

6/2/2026 at 6:23:18 PM

Eh. That quote conflates Ellison and Oracle and I don't think that's correct. I think there's a danger in just accepting that a human being is abhorrent. It _should_ outrage us that Ellison is the way he is. It's silly to think "the lawnmower hates me" because it isn't capable of hate. Ellison is capable of hate and it's not deluded to think he might hate you and I and want to control our lives.

by afavour

6/3/2026 at 4:58:16 PM

> That quote conflates Ellison and Oracle

I think he also mentions what ORACLE stands for in that quote: One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison.

by therein

6/2/2026 at 6:29:49 PM

>That quote conflates Ellison and Oracle and I don't think that's correct.

Agreed, he's only 41% of Oracle.

by fer

6/2/2026 at 6:25:56 PM

You've fallen into the trap.

by breve

6/2/2026 at 6:06:06 PM

I think some of that is just Larry Ellison

by Georgelemental

6/2/2026 at 6:11:22 PM

You mean ...

One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison?

by TwoNineA

6/2/2026 at 6:17:44 PM

The asshole rot in tech goes much deeper than just Larry Ellison.

by analognoise

6/2/2026 at 6:28:38 PM

Perhaps, but there's only One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison.

by antonvs

6/2/2026 at 6:09:18 PM

And Google, Meta, etc. None of the big companies habe your interests at heart.

by jasonvorhe

6/2/2026 at 6:15:02 PM

What a strange thing to say. Why would they? Do you have their interest at heart? Do you have the average persons interest at heart? Again: Why would you? That's by definition not how interests work. And that is roughly fine (albeit a kinder universe would be nice).

by jstummbillig

6/2/2026 at 6:17:51 PM

Even if I have no one's best interest but my own at heart, I can't do anywhere close to as much damage to society at large as a trillion dollar corporation. Also, corporations aren't people, and it's silly to compare individuals to massive organizations.

by saghm

6/2/2026 at 7:35:11 PM

That is not the point though? I am not saying that there are no issues with big corps and their interests. Theirs not being yours is just not one of them.

by jstummbillig

6/2/2026 at 7:40:48 PM

"An entity with a larger pool of cash than many countries and mutual influence with the government, which everyone agrees should have our best interests" not having our best interest is definitely something I'd consider an interest.

by saghm

6/2/2026 at 8:48:00 PM

Why?

Them not having your best interests at heart does not make them an adversary. Just like you not having the best interests of your grocer or work place or most other humans on the planet at heart does not make you an adversary.

by jstummbillig

6/2/2026 at 6:26:25 PM

I'd argue that society ensures (or should ensure) that we, collectively, do have the average person's interest at heart. The problem is when billionaires like these effectively decide to opt out of society. Stop paying taxes, bend the political system to their will.

Even if you think of them as the most selfish people possible, billionaires ought to have the average person's interest at heart. Because once the country is full of average people who are unhappy with their lives it typically doesn't work out well for those with power.

by afavour

6/2/2026 at 6:17:36 PM

>Why would you?

Because the fundamental building block of society (which we are losing rapidly) is some amount of care for your fellow person.

Your comment is a great example of how we Prisoner's Dilemma'ed ourselves into a world of isolation and decaying institutions.

by RC_ITR

6/2/2026 at 6:33:49 PM

> That's by definition not how interests work.

It can be. For example, see "enlightened self interest" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlightened_self-interest), a concept that the companies in question seem to discard in favor of short-term profits.

The Golden Rule "do unto others" is an example of this concept, and it answers your question "why would you?"

> And that is roughly fine (albeit a kinder universe would be nice).

You're confusing the status quo with what must be. It's possible for people to have a sane interpretation of self-interest. We should do a better job of reeducating and/or removing from society the people who don't seem capable of that.

by antonvs

6/2/2026 at 6:38:06 PM

Some, but definitely not just him.

Bezos' recent CNBC interview was enough of a kick in the nuts to finally get me to migrate off of AWS last weekend.

by epistasis

6/2/2026 at 6:10:33 PM

There's definitely people who blindly praise and romanticize China and ignore how dystopian all the monitoring systems there are, there is essentially no privacy. Even chat apps are infiltrated or Chinese run in some way, shape, or form.

by giancarlostoro

6/2/2026 at 6:18:05 PM

While that’s true, the Chinese government does also seem to be motivated to keep the cost of housing and food low for its citizens, and provide services and facilities for the public good.

by squidsoup

6/2/2026 at 6:33:23 PM

Ha, you really believe that? You can't live in area without the permission of the Government. The current Chinese regime seems to be really going kinda crazy with their new leader. They've lost their more practical leadership since the new guy has consolidated power.

by vondur

6/3/2026 at 5:58:17 AM

You can't live in area without the permission of the Government.

This comes up every. single. time. It's so undifferentiated to be basically misinformation. Huji, household registration has existed in China for centuries. The modern form, hukou was designed to control mass migration and rapid urbanisation which is, with a population of 1B, understandable if you want to avoid clusters of slums with populations in the millions. Besides, they are lessing this more and more since 2012.

https://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202312/05/WS656e7f76a3109...

with their new leader

New? Xi Jinping has been leading China since 2012, that's almost 15 years.

by frm88

6/2/2026 at 6:42:58 PM

Not to mention buildings last maybe 25 years before they start falling apart. Compared to 70 in the US.

by giancarlostoro

6/2/2026 at 6:18:13 PM

I am not endorsing what China is doing in terms of surveillance by any means, but their argument would be that every nation not subservient to the US got overthrown by CIA backed forces the moment they opened up.

The surveillance tech that is much more likely to be deployed in the US and that few are talking about is Israeli tech used to spy on and suppress the self determination of Palestinians. Especially given the recently proposed fusing of US/Israeli military tech.

by Matl

6/2/2026 at 6:44:07 PM

> Especially given the recently proposed fusing of US/Israeli military tech.

This has been a thing for a while to be fair. Not sure if you're just mentioning of some new project instead? We've given and gotten back tech to and from Israel.

by giancarlostoro

6/2/2026 at 6:15:45 PM

usually people romanticize china when they're comparing it to the united states. are chat apps in the US not infiltrated or run by america?

by pasquinelli

6/2/2026 at 6:29:10 PM

Signal genuinely isn't, or other end-to-end encryption chat apps. But yeah, WhatsApp and Discord and others are run by American companies that follow US law.

by JuniperMesos

6/2/2026 at 6:11:18 PM

Power corrupts. It’s one of the most predictable effects throughout human history.

It’s interesting because it doesn’t seem like it needs to be intrinsic to power, and yet every time someone gains it they eventually become corrupt.

by an0malous

6/2/2026 at 6:15:34 PM

It's so frustrating because even the notionally good actors look at this and think "yeah but it's not gonna corrupt me"

No you fuck, the only way to walk the good path is to give up power and never let it concentrate again.

Larry Ellison of course is one of the most anti human people on the planet and I doubt he was ever anything else.

by thot_experiment

6/2/2026 at 6:21:39 PM

The real question is whether the threshold before it causes irreversible corruption is before or after the point where you can make real change. The latter is obviously quite terrifying as it essentially means that democracy will always be corrupt (unless time is a factor perhaps)

by bodge5000

6/2/2026 at 6:38:25 PM

I think resiliency to the corruption isn't evenly distributed among the populace, there are definitely those people who are capable of resisting it long enough to get shit done. I just think it's mostly the levels of abstraction that these people have between them and anything real.

Honestly, if you suggest surveillance state shit, you should just be mandated to livestream your life 24/7, you have nothing to hide right?

by thot_experiment

6/2/2026 at 8:46:24 PM

It's never irreversible. Every generation has to go through this.

by hackable_sand

6/2/2026 at 6:21:59 PM

There is an implicit disbelief in human, liberated and civilized by technology, acting civilly by choice and just because it is the right thing to do.

by voxleone

6/2/2026 at 6:22:48 PM

The way he phrases it makes it clear he doesn't consider himself or his peers as part of the "citizenry". I suppose subjects or peasants or peons might have been a bit too on the nose, even for him.

by FireBeyond

6/2/2026 at 6:02:00 PM

You can understand why - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgpqeq82rvo

They bought a country for pocket change.

Jeff will be president within 20 years imo.

by swarnie

6/2/2026 at 6:07:40 PM

> Jeff will be president within 20 years imo.

It could be worse, it could be Musk.

Having seen what Americans will vote for, either option is possible.

by lostlogin

6/2/2026 at 6:14:55 PM

every time this comes up I feel it's worth reminding people that this already happened before in American history - 1890's and the robber baron industrialists that monopolized everything.

by lazystar

6/2/2026 at 10:07:22 PM

Thanks for this.

Time for some reading.

by lostlogin

6/2/2026 at 6:07:44 PM

exactly.. and in the near term, if not Jeff directly somebody like JD Vance who is a useful puppet for techbros

by AIorNot

6/2/2026 at 6:28:16 PM

and who can blame them, if we've learned anything from the last few years it's that the American people are utterly servile and passive when faced with these people, in fact they largely seem to crave their wannabe dictators.

In 2023 when Musk refused to sign a collective bargaining agreement with the Swedish IF Metall union, not only did the union resist, not only did other unions in Sweden resist, Scandinavian countries together boycotted supply chains including dock- and metalworkers in Denmark and Norway. What would they do in America? Give him money on Twitter to get a blue checkmark and hope he gives them five minutes of attention in a reply.

by Barrin92

6/2/2026 at 6:05:17 PM

If you frame it this way in your mind you will be surprised when people pick surveillance over public disorder. If you don't like that world (I don't either) you can't bury your head in the sand about the problems it is solving, you need a "No, but... " framing where you give answers that actually work.

There is a ground-level appeal of the China-style panopticon because it delivers public order and clean streets. Larry didn't just buy his way to digital dictator by bribing the right people, it answers a question in a way other people are avoiding, because answering it requires a lot of work and uncomfortable tradeoffs.

by bpodgursky

6/2/2026 at 6:22:14 PM

> There is a ground-level appeal of the China-style panopticon because it delivers public order and clean streets

Clean streets and high speed rail are not a bundled deal with the panopticon - there is no causative linkage. Surveillance - as Ellison plainly mentioned - is for controlling anti-establishment behaviors.

by overfeed

6/2/2026 at 6:22:19 PM

> There is a ground-level appeal of the China-style panopticon because it delivers public order and clean streets.

Does it? Japan is also famously clean, so maybe it’s the ethnic homogeneity? On the other hand, Singapore is very heterogeneous and clean, and eastern Kentucky is very homogenous and run-down. So maybe this whole attributing outcomes of society to singular factors isn’t very founded in science or reason but just gives people an opportunity to confirm whatever biases they have.

by datsci_est_2015

6/2/2026 at 6:29:01 PM

The secret is shame. You can enforce behavior through shame culture slowly (JP) or rapidly with technology, half the reason PRC cleaned up fast is people didn't want their faces plastered on misdemeanour jumbotron. Probably won't work if you live in a shameless society where social humiliation has little or even opposite effect.

by maxglute

6/2/2026 at 6:26:21 PM

Japan has historically been a clean and high-trust society.

China was a ground-level low-trust mess even 25 years ago, with fairly rampant fraud and theft by just about anyone you met on the street. That has completely changed — why? I don't think culture evolves that rapidly ex nihilo, when there's an obvious technology answer.

by bpodgursky

6/2/2026 at 6:44:12 PM

> There is a ground-level appeal of the China-style panopticon because it delivers public order and clean streets.

Correct.

> Larry didn't just buy his way to digital dictator by bribing the right people

Incorrect.

> it answers a question in a way other people are avoiding, because answering it requires a lot of work and uncomfortable tradeoffs.

Larry Ellison is not interested in public order. The surveillance system isn’t going to be for normal people, it’s going to be for Larry Ellison. California isn’t filthy because it lacks a panopticon; it was cleaned for visiting Chinese dignitaries without one. If Ellison had wanted to clean up the street and has the appeal you think that he does, he could have just run for governor.

by lurk2

6/2/2026 at 6:07:53 PM

Haha, ground level appeal in a one party government? How would you know? Of course someone likes China's system, but who? How do you know?

by doctorpangloss

6/2/2026 at 6:35:33 PM

He’s talking about shifting attitudes towards China online, not within China itself.

by lurk2

6/2/2026 at 6:19:25 PM

Lookup China subreddits and on YouTube. Tons of Americans wish they could just pick up and move to China. Most Americans that visit China for the first time love it. It is pretty awesome. Have you been?

by toephu2

6/2/2026 at 6:31:03 PM

What I've seen is visitors loving Chinese high speed rail and endless markets, but not loving the Great Firewall.

An average tourist visiting a country - any country - has a much rosier experience of the country than the average person living there long-term.

by overfeed

6/2/2026 at 6:10:46 PM

Sometimes I wonder if all the hype cycles around cryptocurrencies, AI and other stuff were basically just tech powertripping really hard.

by hootz

6/2/2026 at 6:13:08 PM

Not all arms are created equal

by likemaybealso

6/2/2026 at 6:16:42 PM

"Intellectuals are naturally attracted by the idea of a planned society, in the belief that they will be in charge of it." — Roger Scruton

by poszlem

6/2/2026 at 9:30:31 PM

None of these people are intellectuals.

They decry colleges for not being good enough compliant worker factories. They attack higher learning institutions. They make no attempts at pushing knowledge.

They are salesmen.

by mrguyorama

6/2/2026 at 6:26:28 PM

In this case though, the nerds are in charge of it. They created and own it.

I mean even the lawyers are subordinate to them at this point.

by bilbo0s

6/2/2026 at 6:34:43 PM

> I mean even the lawyers are subordinate to them at this point

They could all be in jail by this time tomorrow if Todd Blanche - a lawyer - wills it. Riding the authoritarianism tiger is risky business.

by overfeed

6/2/2026 at 6:12:16 PM

Sometimes I wonder, if we were actually allowed to engage in the consensual drugs and sex that constitutes 95% of the activity people want to "get away with", would our societal response to infringements on our privacy be even weaker than it currently is?

by standardUser

6/2/2026 at 6:32:33 PM

I think the real risk here is the impact of perfect enforcement of all the tiny things. Enforcement against every minor unsanctioned activity can be self executing with AI. You're going downhill at 10 MPH over the speed limit before you brake, and the camera, if not the vehicle itself, cites you. You cross the street outside of the crosswalk and now you've got 2 strikes. There's nothing to contest, because you acted unlawfully.

by ibejoeb

6/2/2026 at 6:15:54 PM

They have been recording.

by t1234s

6/2/2026 at 7:13:12 PM

Fear. He's talking about fear. Making every citizen afraid through mass surveillance.

You know, the core part of the book 1984, where a dystopian authoritarian regime rules by mass surveillance, propaganda, and allegiance to one party.

Truth really is crazier than fiction.

by 0xbadcafebee

6/2/2026 at 7:55:45 PM

1984

by poolnoodle

6/3/2026 at 8:32:49 AM

Son of a bitch / whore / mother fucker

by johnpaulgeorge

6/3/2026 at 8:36:06 AM

Don't anthropomorphise the lawnmower.

by defrost

6/2/2026 at 6:18:11 PM

Factually wrong. People actually take pride in recording their wrongdoings.

by hkon

6/2/2026 at 6:16:18 PM

You can’t have mass immigration from mainly economic migrants from the third world, under funded police forces, and a legal system built for high trust, highly educated, fairly homogeneous populace at the same time; and expect things to be all happy days.

by inshard

6/2/2026 at 6:00:11 PM

In other words, "We're evil so you can't be".

by jqpabc123

6/2/2026 at 5:54:38 PM

Look how well it worked for cops! I'm not suggesting we get rid of their bodycams, but it's easily gamed.

It's one thing to be rich and enjoy the luxuries afforded by that, but to buy dominance over the very lives of others is when the angry mob retaliation is entirely justifiable.

by pstuart

6/2/2026 at 6:09:23 PM

Exactly, cops can impose force on you and their jobs requires them to do it. If they wouldn't have body cams, it would be hard to see if coercion was justified or not. Surveilling powerless folks works in the other direction. It only serves to make them easier to discipline and teaches them that deviations from approved behaviour will be deterministically punished. And I also don't believe anyone is currently paid to act on their best behaviour as a simple citizen. Although this kind of monitoring works quite well for children under 6, you don't want paternalistic institutions, since you will never outgrow them.

by gobdovan

6/2/2026 at 6:07:23 PM

In what way did it work well for cops?

From what I've seen it goes both ways with bodycam footage. The cops often have to put up with seriously dangerous stupid people and cops on power trips are video'd abusing people. Not that I am defending Ellison. Sadly the rich will always be able to buy their way out of most any bad situation except screwing over richer people.

by strangattractor

6/2/2026 at 6:23:33 PM

By "worked well" I mean for citizens -- there's been multiple cases where cops lied and their bodycam exposed the lie.

by pstuart

6/2/2026 at 9:05:06 PM

They turn them off all the time or the footage gets deleted

by downrightmike

6/2/2026 at 9:40:13 PM

Understood. But sometimes they forget, and those times have been shown to be valuable to get justice for the citizens they are engaged with.

by pstuart

6/3/2026 at 12:16:05 AM

yeah, I have no doubt they will digitally scrub cops out of the mass surveillance cameras

by downrightmike

6/2/2026 at 6:30:08 PM

Can we put webcams in larrys home then?

by claysmithr

6/2/2026 at 6:12:48 PM

Not all arms are equal

by likemaybealso

6/2/2026 at 7:45:48 PM

This will only happen in fucked up nations such as the USA, where cameras are popping up all over the place.

by Gud

6/2/2026 at 8:45:25 PM

I think you misspelled UK.

by baal80spam

6/2/2026 at 9:04:06 PM

nope, everywhere

by downrightmike

6/2/2026 at 6:55:03 PM

Whatever Larry, just don't force us to play your daughters terrible game.

by jotaroDeon

6/2/2026 at 6:12:15 PM

uh... in a very literal sense upvoting this helps Ellison. I think

by sometimelurker

6/2/2026 at 6:50:17 PM

"We'll be the only ones capable of manipulating the system if all the citizens are under surveillance"

by cyanydeez

6/2/2026 at 6:20:01 PM

Funny how stuff like privacy and freedom of speech have always been touted as key differentiators of a liberal democracy. And now the mask is falling off because the interests of the ruling class are increasingly diverging from those of the working majority.

by yogthos

6/2/2026 at 6:30:54 PM

Jan 2010: Jeffrey, Epstein - Chief Financial Officer - ORACLE USA, Inc

https://search.sunbiz.org/Inquiry/CorporationSearch/ConvertT...

Brought to you by Corporation Service Company, the trusted service partner of deep state.

by bflesch

6/2/2026 at 9:57:44 PM

https://www.bvp.com/team/jeff-epstein

Not the same person, dumbass.

by pinewurst

6/3/2026 at 12:48:10 PM

Love your confidence. Must be just a coincidence then, huh?

Do you believe someone working for US intelligence who arranges a vanity social security number for Ghislaine and whose grandparent was head of social security administration has no means to create multiple identities?

    Prior to joining Oracle, Jeff served as Chief Financial Officer of several public and private companies, including DoubleClick (sold to Google), King World Productions (sold to CBS) and Nielsen’s Media Measurement and Information Group. Earlier in his career, he was an investment banker at The First Boston Corporation.
Your "Jeff Epstein" should fix his CV, because King family was previous owners of Zorro ranch. And Nielsen family was previous owners of the Epstein island. Is your Jeff maybe the real Jeff who made a killing in finance and the publicly known "bad" Jeff was just using his name, just as he did with Marius Fortelni?

And once the "bad" Jeff goes to Florida jail in 2009 the "clean" Jeff leaves Florida with Oracle?

by bflesch

6/2/2026 at 6:10:34 PM

[flagged]

by AyanamiKaine

6/2/2026 at 5:57:16 PM

[dead]

by threwrfaway

6/2/2026 at 6:38:36 PM

[dead]

by black_13

6/2/2026 at 6:11:08 PM

He forgot to mention we'll need 1000 more data centers and 3000 new prisons to manage the chaos. So confused by this billionaire behavior with wanting to control society.

by sumoboy

6/2/2026 at 5:54:01 PM

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

AI has been moving too fast to care about what some billionaire's opinion on it was 2 years ago.

by lucasmullens

6/2/2026 at 6:10:41 PM

It wasn't a warning, it was a boast.

by daveguy