Tech
AI will create a better world, says Oracle’s Ellison | Computer Weekly
Artificial intelligence was predictably front and centre at Oracle’s revamped and rebranded customer event – which changed its name to AI World from Cloud World in a last-minute switch-up just a few short weeks ago. In his annual address to the event, company founder Larry Ellison threw everything and the kitchen sink at the technology.
In a lengthy address, Ellison described the two biggest opportunities – for Oracle and its users at least – as AI training and AI reasoning. Training on public data is the fastest growing business opportunity in history, potentially bigger than the industrial revolution, said the veteran tech leader.
Reasoning on private data will be more valuable and according to Ellison, who built Oracle’s first databases 48 years ago, the firm’s extensive heritage means it already holds a great deal of it.
“What will change the world is when we start using these remarkable electronic brains to solve humanity’s most difficult and enduring problems,” said Ellison.
He went on to reject characterisation of the current AI hype as akin to the dotcom bubble that ruined many fortunes at the turn of the century, although he did concede there are tech companies that claim to be AI companies which are nothing of the kind.
“The smartest people I know are investing fortunes, to be specific, they’re investing their fortunes in building and training these AI models. That’s how important [and] extraordinary they are,” he said.
“I think by and large we are going to live much better lives, healthier, longer lives, eat better food, live in better houses. It should be a much better world because these tools are so enormously powerful [although] some of the things they will do are a little bit shocking.”
Bringing things back down to earth, AI World’s opening keynote fell to CEO Mike Sicilia who described a “once in a generation moment” and said Oracle was making no secret of its ambitions to stand as an AI leader, delivering trusted services to transform organisations in every industry.
“We’re not just showing up with some AI bells and whistles bolted on to our technology,” said Sicilia. “There’s no other company that’s bringing together the data, the infrastructure, the applications, and the trust to power every AI ambition for every business at every single layer of the tech stack.”
Representatives of Oracle customers including car rental firm Avis Budget, Brazilian pharma and biomedical research organistion Biofy Technologies, US energy and utility supplier Exelon, and hospitality group Marriott International, joined Sicilia to discuss how they are partnering with the supplier on all things AI.
Ty Breland, chief human resources officer and executive vice president of operations services at Marriott International, said he was using AI to both empower the organisation’s 800,000 employees – who are scattered across around 9,000 properties – and enhance the guest experience.
Marriott started its AI journey with Oracle in 2023, and as the two organisations deepened their partnership, said Breland, it was important to him that his own people didn’t feel forced into engaging with a potentially unwelcome, even threatening, new technology.
Early on when planning its initial deployment among Marriott’s public-facing customer service agents, the technology team sought feedback from them as to what pain points they actually wanted to solve. The end result, so say Marriott’s leadership, was something that people genuinely wanted to use.
Breland said: “As we started to deploy those solutions it became contagious. They wanted more.”
“If we get this right, AI isn’t replacing the human touch, it’s bringing the human forward,” he added.
Oracle hits Database AI upgrade button
Amid a plethora of announcements made at AI World, Oracle unleashed a major upgrade to Oracle AI Database, moving from 23ai to 26ai and promising to “architect AI into the core of data management”. The firm said this advances its vision of a next-gen AI-native database spanning the entire data and development stack.
At its heart, the upgrade enables customers to look to run more dynamic agentic workflows that provide them with specific answers and solutions from a combination of private database data and public information.
Building on an open AI strategy, 26ai’s capabilities will supposedly offer customers more freedom of choice when building and deploying AI apps and services. In a nod to growing cyber security concerns over so called harvest now, decrypt later attacks, it also now includes the NIST-backed quantum-resistant ML-KEM algorithm to encrypt data when it is on the move.
The firm also announced the general availability of Oracle AI Data Platform, which is designed to enable customers to securely connect generative AI-models to their enterprise data, applications and workflows, and the expansion of a longstanding partnership with AMD to launch the first public AI supercluster powered by AMD’s Instinct MI450 Series GPUs. This will begin with an initial 50,000 GPU deployment beginning towards the back end of 2026, pending further expansion, and is designed to help customers scale their AI projects.
I tried the battery version, which does require you recharge it every couple of weeks, but the wired-in version is the top recommendation on our guide to the Best Video Doorbells.
A Better Birdhouse
I had a new-to-me problem this spring: bird invasion. A little bird made a nest in my front-door wreath without us noticing. One evening, my sister opened the door, and the bird flew out of the nest and straight into our house. After a 30-minute battle to get it outside again (and keep my cat from eating it), it wasn’t until we saw the bird fly off the door again the next day that we realized it was calling our home its home, too.
If this is a common problem at your house, our resident bird-gear tester Kat Merck has a solution: a smart nesting box. Birdfy makes a few different smart bird feeders we like for bird-watching, and the Nest Duo is a birdhouse that lets you watch the birds while they nest inside of it. It’s a slim, attractive box that will add to your front yard’s style while also packing two solar-powered cameras (one facing the entrance, one focused inside) so you can bird-watch from multiple angles. It comes with different hole sizes to appeal to different species, metal predator guards to prevent chewing around the hole, and a remote control to reset or recharge the camera without disturbing your feathered neighbors.
Stylish Smart Lights
Govee
Outdoor Clear Bulb String Lights
I’ve liked Govee’s smart outdoor string lights before, usually for my holiday decor, and have previously recommended something similar with a bistro-light-like look that happened to be smart. These clear bulb string lights are part of Govee’s current lineup and have a contemporary twist with a triangle in the center instead of the wire filament. These are a fun option for outdoor lights you can enjoy on warm nights, and they can do every color and shade of white without looking as bulky as permanent outdoor lights. (Added bonus, these lights are also Matter compatible!)
Fresh Bulbs
Cync
Smart LED Light Bulb, PAR38
If you have light fixtures you want to remote-control, add an outdoor smart bulb. There are tons to choose from, and you can usually find one from any brand you already have at home. The only downside is that outdoor-rated smart bulbs are usually 4.75-inch-diameter PAR38-style bulbs, so they’re best for downward-facing floodlights on your porch or balcony. They’ll likely be too big to fit in a wall fixture as a replacement for a normal-sized bulb. Don’t just grab any smart bulb—not all are outdoor-rated. Check for mentions of outdoor use and waterproof ratings to make sure they’re safe to use. I’m a big fan of Cync bulbs, and the brand has an outdoor version of the Cync Full Color bulbs I like to use indoors. You’ll be able to add fun colors as well as shades of white, so you can turn the porch a spooky orange or red for Halloween, pink for Valentine’s Day, or the colors of your favorite sports team on game day.
Remote-Controlled Garage
If your garage is the centerpiece of your home’s curb appeal, you can control it as easily as a smart door by adding a smart controller. You can do two different styles: I have the Chamberlain MyQ professionally installed smart garage opener, which means the device that controls my garage has these smarts built into it (plus a camera, but I find it doesn’t work great with how far the device is from my Wi-Fi router), or you can get a smart garage controller that can add smart features onto an existing garage door. Both let you check whether the garage is open or closed and operate it remotely, and you can add a video keypad that doubles as a video doorbell and can let you open or close the garage without your phone.
Smart Shades
The front of my home faces west, so it’s absolutely baking at the end of the day. What I need to add are some of our favorite smart shades to automate closing the shades on that side of the house at the right time of day. These also give your home a nice, cohesive look and immediate, controllable privacy from the outside world. WIRED reviewer Simon Hill recommends the SmartWings shades as his top picks, and Lutron’s Caseta shades if you’re looking for a more upgraded look.
Invisible Swaps
Looking to add some smarts without touching your existing setup? These switch-ups can make your front door and yard smart without being visible.
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April might be springtime in the northern hemisphere, but some of the best streaming services seem to think it’s the perfect time for a dry run of spooky season. How else to explain the arrival of some exquisitely dark slices of horror, like 28 Days Later: The Bone Temple arriving on Netflix, Weapons coming to Prime Video, or Shelby Oaks landing on Hulu? If you prefer your off-season Halloween viewing to be in the vein of campy B movies rather than serious scares though, horror specialist Shudder has you covered with Deathstalker, a gloriously cheesy reboot of a near-forgotten ’80s series.
Reality is often scarier than fiction though, as shown by Louis Theroux’s Inside the Manosphere—his first documentary film with Netflix, exploring the dark side of social media and the world of toxic male influencers. (Be sure to read our interview with the filmmaker.) And if the thought of that leaves you wanting something a bit more wholesome to watch, thankfully Zootopia 2 has popped up on Disney+—and there’s even a rabbit in that, for some appropriately springtime imagery.
Here are WIRED’s picks of the best movies to watch right now.
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
The fourth film in the long-running postapocalyptic horror series switches focus from rampaging rage zombies to a more dangerous threat: humans. OK, OK, “people are the real monsters” isn’t a hot take for the genre, but The Bone Temple offers a unique twist, with 28 Years Later survivor Spike (Alfie Williams) trapped in the company of a murderous gang led by deranged satanist “Sir Lord” Jimmy Crystal (Sinners’ Jack O’Connell). The villain is modeled on disgraced British TV presenter Jimmy Savile, whose sexual abuse crimes hadn’t been revealed by the time of the initial outbreak in 28 Days Later, adding a dash of real-world terror.
As the group stalks what remains of the English countryside, Spike’s only hope might be Dr. Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), whose experiments on curing alpha zombie Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry) might hold humanity’s last hope. Although best watched back to back with its predecessor for the full, horrifying picture, director Nia DaCosta’s chapter stands on its own—and earns bonus points for one of the best uses of Iron Maiden’s “Number of the Beast” in film history.
Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere
It’s the silence that does the trick; British documentarian Louis Theroux always knows when not to speak and instead let his subject expose themselves for the world to see. It’s a masterful technique whether Theroux is investigating the Westboro Baptist Church or UFO conspiracy theorists, but it is rarely put to better use than in his latest outing: exploring the online “manosphere” subculture of self-appointed “alphas” offering toxic advice on how to be a “real man.” Speaking with key figures in the loosely defined movement, Theroux’s mild-mannered approach often leaves them to do most of the talking, exposing shockingly misogynistic and extremist views. Even more distressing? The quiet revelation that for many of them their performative masculinity is all just one big grift, and how they rationalize the harm they cause in pursuit of a payout. Depressing but compelling viewing—not all men, but definitely all of these men.
Crime 101
Jewel thief Mike (Chris Hemsworth) is the best in the business, a meticulous planner who pulls off his heists without leaving a shred of evidence—much to the consternation of LAPD detective Lou Lubesnick (Mark Ruffalo), who doesn’t even know exactly who he’s hunting for a string of thefts. Elsewhere in the City of Angels, Sharon (Halle Berry) is an underappreciated VP at an insurance firm, frustrated at being passed over for promotion for years. She’s the perfect insider to help Mike orchestrate an elaborate $11 million diamond heist. But as Lou uncovers evidence connecting to Mike’s past, and the chaotic, violent biker Ormon (Barry Keoghan) aims to take the score for himself, even the most masterful planning can’t prevent everything spiraling dangerously out of control.
Kevin Weil, OpenAI’s former chief product officer who was recently tapped to build a new AI workspace for scientists, Prism, is leaving the company, WIRED has confirmed. Weil was previously an early executive leading product at Instagram.
OpenAI is also sunsetting Prism, which the company launched as a web app in January this year to give scientists a better way to work with AI. The company is folding the roughly 10-person team behind it into Thibault Sottiaux’s Codex team. An OpenAI spokesperson confirmed the changes, and tells WIRED this is part of the company’s effort to unify its business and product strategy. OpenAI has broader ambitions to turn Codex, its AI coding application, into an “everything app.”
Weil, who joined OpenAI in June 2024, announced last September that he would be starting a new initiative inside of the company called “OpenAI for Science.” Now, OpenAI is dispersing those employees throughout the company’s product, research, and infrastructure teams. An OpenAI spokesperson reiterated the company’s commitment to accelerating scientific discovery, and says it’s one of the clearest ways AI can benefit humanity.
OpenAI is currently trying to refocus the company around a few key areas, such as enterprise offerings and coding. Last month, OpenAI’s CEO of AGI deployment Fidji Simo told staff that the company needs to simplify its product offerings. The push to divert resources to more consequential efforts resulted in OpenAI discontinuing its Sora video-generation app.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
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