AI War Cloud Database

What responsibilities do users and makers have in choosing AI tools, when their development can also lead to deadly outcomes at massive scales? AI War Cloud Database catalogues the systems used to make automated decisions in warfare, and it maps where the same types of tools appear in smartphones and popular social platforms.

The iris scanner tested on refugees becomes technology for a crypto wallet. The robot vacuum mapping homes becomes a bomb robot abroad. The chatbot trained by low-wage workers determines the results of your next internet search as well as the next drone target or the force of the next bomb.

AI War Cloud Database makes these latent connections plain. It builds a taxonomy of AI decision-making systems, shows how they are used in both military and commercial contexts, and tracks which nations and corporations are collaborating to deploy them. It offers an interactive interface for interrogating both automated warfare and the seemingly innocuous devices we use every day.

Credits

Thank you to Claire Carroll, Kate Crawford, Ariana Dongus, Samir Ghosh, Vladan Joler, Joana Moll, Pedro Oliveira, Miller Puckette, Corbinian Ruckerbauer, Nataša Vukajlovic, Ben Wagner and the AI Futures Lab, Thorsten Wetzling, Cambridge Digital Humanities and the Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS) in Germany for discussions and support that contributed to the work. Icon legend and credits on www.aiwar.cloud

Sarah Ciston

Sarah Ciston is a professor of Computational Thinking and Aesthetic Doing at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. Their artistic research builds tools to bring intersectional, critical–creative approaches to machine learning.

Winner of the 2025 Ars Electronica STARTS Grand Prize, she is the author of “A Critical Field Guide for Working with Machine Learning Datasets” and co-author of Inventing ELIZA: How the First Chatbot Shaped the Future of AI (MIT Press, 2026).