Decades before the current AI boom, Oracle’s Larry Ellison argued that applying AI to any problem was “the height of nonsense.”

In 1987, long before artificial intelligence became the mass-market obsession it is today, Computer world convened a roundtable to discuss a then-new and unresolved question: How might AI intersect with database systems?

The round table led by the tech queen Esther Dysonbrought together three completely different perspectives. Intellicorp’s Tom Kehler represented the expert systems movement (the 1980s equivalent of today’s generative AI hype). John Landry of Cullinet focused on applying AI techniques to enterprise applications, and Larry Ellison, president and CEO of Oracle, took a view that was already contrarian even by the standards of the time.

What makes the discussion notable in retrospect is not the optimism about AI that was common at the time, but Ellison’s repeated insistence on limits.

While others described AI as a new level of architecture or even a “new species” of software, Ellison argued that intelligence should be used sparingly,…