Reading about 18c it sounds like the focus will be on applying ML to performance tuning the database, this is actually a pretty solid thing to pursue as performance tuning will usually have dramatic results and it's a knowledge area that is isolated and esoteric.
Larry Ellison never bullshits, the question is if its actually gonna as autonomous as he says. From my experience with
oracle DBs its gonna do half of what he claims and cost twice what he claims
Oracle is so late to the game its gonna take a miracle for them to make a dent in AWS