Oracle's Larry Ellison dismisses 'SaaS apocalypse' fears, says AI will make software better

Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison has dismissed fears that artificial intelligence (AI) will kill the traditional software industry, saying it will instead let companies build complete, ready-to-use applications for entire industries that need no training and can be switched on without lengthy installations.

Speaking at Oracle AI World here, Ellison, the company's executive chairman and chief technology officer, rejected talk of a "SaaS apocalypse", in which businesses would use AI to build their own applications instead of buying software-as-a-service (SaaS) products.

"I don't think that's quite true. I think companies will continue to build applications, but they will be quite different because of AI. They will be much, much better," he noted.


Business software has so far never been fully finished for any one industry, Ellison said. A hospital, bank or hotel using even the best commercial products has had to build its own extensions or connect applications from other vendors.

"Because of AI for the first time, we as an industry, the software industry, can actually finish the applications if we start doing them industry by industry," he said.

Oracle is building complete suites for banking, retail, hospitality and government but chose to start with healthcare, which Ellison called the most complex industry in the world.

"It's an enormously complex industry. Science is constantly evolving. The industry is constantly getting better, as AI showed up on the scene, we decided we could build a complete industry suite. And if we could build that, we could prove to ourselves and others that we could build banking and retail and hospitality and government because the others are not as complex," he said.

Ellison said applications should be as simple to use as asking a question. He recounted taking his son to hospital with a broken leg. There, an orthopaedic surgeon, a radiologist and finally a systems expert had to navigate screen after screen to pull up the boy's X-rays.

"This is ridiculous. If you can ask a question describing what you want to see, you should then immediately see it. Any other user interface is nonsense. But you have to have AI to deliver that, to understand the question, to navigate the screens for you transparently and show you what you want to do."

"There should be no training required to use any of these applications," Ellison said.

People would still need to train to become doctors, accountants or lawyers, he said, "but once you can ask the question, you should get the answer."

He also criticised software installations that can take up to two years and cost "a lot of money".

With Oracle Health, the company's healthcare division, a hospital already using another records system can simply switch on a new module which discovers existing processes and just adds to it.

Ellison called Oracle Health the company's first system that is "completely based on AI", from its interface to its installation, and said Oracle would keep adding AI to its other business software.

"In time everything's going to be AI," he said.

Explaining his focus on healthcare, Ellison said his mother got cancer when he was a student, calling her passing away "one of the worst experiences in my life".

Ellison said AI has already dramatically changed drug development and predicted that most cancers would be gone within five to 10 years. The cures, he said, would not be "just for very wealthy people in New York or California".

Systems such as Oracle Health's clinical trials module would let patients join trials wherever they live, rather than only near a handful of US research hospitals.

"We think that drug discovery is going to go through a golden age." Ellison rejected the idea that AI would replace all people.

"I think that's kind of nonsensical," he said.

"The tools make people much better. Makes us much more productive," he said. He cited aeroplane autopilots, which he said have flown better than human pilots for a long time.

"But there are still pilots," he said, adding that some jobs, such as those of taxi and ride-share drivers, would be replaced.

As robots take on more work, governments should change how they raise taxes, Ellison said.

"We need to change from taxing human labour to taxing value added," he said. Taxing the value that robots add could fund what he called "universal high income". He said this would take "more than a decade to come about".

Eventually, robots will do more and more work, but they will be adding value too.

"Because of AI, we will all become so wealthy," he said, adding that people would also become healthier. PTI