Speaking on-stage at the company’s recent AI World conference, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison declared AI could eventually make everyone “healthier and wealthier”.
Apparently unfazed by the technology’s impacts on humanity, Ellison does acknowledge that governments need to have a shift in mindset to adapt to this new future.
In a Q&A during the conference’s hotly anticipated final keynote, Ellison outlined a future where AI systems and robots could dramatically reduce the cost of goods and services. But rather than accepting the suggestion that AI would end up replacing us all, he argued that the technology would ultimately serve to make us more productive, allowing workers to achieve things that simply weren’t possible before.
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“I think that’s kind of nonsensical,” Ellison said about predictions that AI will eventually replace everyone.
The multi-billionaire accepted AI and automation will inevitably displace some jobs, pointing toward rideshare services in a hint to ongoing approval of driverless cars in Las Vegas and other cities.
But he also stressed not all jobs would be impacted equally, revealing his pilot qualifications on-stage and stressing that autopilot hasn’t replaced human pilots despite being a decades-old technology.
Although humans will continue to play supervisory roles in many industries (we’re already seeing human knowledge worker roles evolve into AI agent managers in some cases), Ellison argued that the overall benefits would be positive, providing governments get involved to support the humans they represent.
Painting a picture of what he meant, he described a hypothetical house being constructed entirely by robots in a scenario where automation had replaced human labor. Whereas human labor would have accounted for, say, 80% of the cost of a house before, four-fifths of the house instantly becomes cheaper because of the impact of automation.
He used this example to set the foundation for the idea of ‘universal high income’ – a concept already floated by other tech billionaires, including Elon Musk.
Taxation needs to change to enable the provision of a universal income
“We need to change from taxing human labor to taxing value added,” he said. “So when the robots add value, all that value that the robots add is taxed, and we could have universal high income.”
Universal high income is an evolution of the universal basic income concept, which provides citizens with a regular payment that covers essential living costs. Instead, he suggested that the enormous productivity gains that AI could eventually unlock could create enough wealth to support much higher incomes, despite declining human work activity.
He referenced economist Milton Friedman’s negative income tax proposal, describing it as a “reverse income tax” that could help distribute some of the wealth generated by AI.
“The robots are adding value. The government’s taxing the value… We all become wealthy as a result.”
However, Ellison’s vision is a wildly ambitious one that would require a colossal change to today’s systems. It would take more than a decade, he admitted. While a future of AI-induced human wealth with less work might sound far-fetched at best in today’s economy, Ellison’s optimism remains on track.
“All of that is doable,” he concluded.
layoffs.fyi has tracked over 135,000 layoffs in the tech sector alone in 2026 to date, including around 21,000 Oracle workers in the 12 months between June 2025 and June 2026, and likely thousands more in September 2026.
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Craig Hale
