Oracle founder and Chairman of the Board Larry Ellison has delivered his keynote on the tech giant’s “Vision and Strategy: Oracle CloudWorld 2024.”
Ellison is these days focused on “AI” and so the speech was heavy on that topic, where the “vision and strategy” involve Oracle supplying what he calls a biometric database in the cloud.
The latter two technologies cover Oracle’s present business, but the addition of biometric surveillance is where Ellison wants to take the company, to provide a system that includes biometrically authenticated credit cards, passport control, school entry, prescription pick ups, and government entitlements.
“People seem to like it,” he observed at one point, referring specifically to biometrically authenticated credit cards but clearly betting on people “liking” the rest of it, too.
One of the “pillars” of AI deployment, according to him, is “user identity” in terms of improved security. Ellison’s idea of a future super-invasive role of computers is getting them to function, when it comes to identification and authentication, close to how humans perceive each other.
The Oracle boss is unhappy with methods such as passwords, the use of which he dismisses as “ridiculous” and “obsolete.” Instead, a device such as a computer or a camera should simply “look” at you and recognize you like another person does, Ellison argues.
And this is achieved by collecting people’s biometric information (fingerprints, face, voice data), and putting it in a centralized place out of their control (a cloud database). “We know who you are. We recognize you,” Ellison went on with his “vision.”
He also appears to believe that his audience (and people in general) are simply pining for this era of the “cumbersome” process of having to always be typing one’s email and password to be over (he’s apparently unfamiliar with password managers).
Still playing on the convenience card, Ellison spoke about biometric logins being easier, faster, and even supposedly more secure, and asked, on behalf of his audience – “Why can’t you just recognize me?,” and then answered his own question, “We can do that, too.”
And, he shared some “good news” with Oracle employees: within a year, the only way they will be able to log into the company’s systems is with their biometric data, as the use of passwords will be discontinued.
