‘AI War Cloud Database’ - Exposing the overlaps of AI used in warfare and in everyday devices.
What responsibilities do we have in choosing AI tools, when their development also leads to deadly outcomes at massive scales? The ‘AI War Cloud Database’ catalogues and maps connections across AI systems used to make deadly decisions in warfare and how those same systems are used in commercially popular devices. Sarah Ciston was awarded with the S+T+ARTS Prize – Grand Prize of the European Commission Artistic Exploration for the work ‘AI War Cloud Database’, 2025.
We use AI every day – on our phones, in online searches, and on social media – yet we rarely consider how the same technologies are used in other, more troubling ways. The ‘AI War Cloud Database’ exposes these overlaps, cataloguing AI systems used to automate decisions in warfare and mapping where similar technologies appear in everyday tools. By making these hidden connections visible, the project shows how the same machine learning systems drive both commercial applications and military operations.
AI War Cloud Database. Video @SarahCiston 2025
Chart of task taxonomy. AI War Cloud Database@SarahCiston
Quote from the Jury Statement
By tracing the links between commercial AI and military infrastructure, Ciston exposes a hidden feedback loop—where tools of convenience become tools of control. At a time of growing geopolitical tensions, AI arms races, and rearmament efforts across Europe and globally, this work underscores the need for democratic oversight, ethical governance, and civic awareness in shaping our technological future. // In the spirit of the STARTS Prize, this work exemplifies the power of art and research to illuminate complex systems—and to invite us all to take part in shaping them.
Excerpt from the Jury Statements available in full on the STARTS website.
Grand Prize of the European Commission for ARTISTIC EXPLORATION honors artistic experiments and works of art that employ technology in ways that exhibit great potential to influence and change technology and how it is deployed, developed and perceived.
A yearly competition is held to single out for recognition innovative projects at the nexus of science, technology and the arts that have what it takes to make a significant impact on economic and social innovation.
The two STARTS Prize winners each receive €20,000 and are prominently featured at Ars Electronica and other events of the consortium partners INOVA+, French Tech Grand Provence, Media Solutions Center Baden-Württemberg, the High-Performance Computing Center Stuttgart, Salzburg Festival, Sonar, T6Ecosystems and Kustodie at TUD Dresden University of Technology.
‘AI War Cloud Database’s connections, showing a taxonomy of the types of systems, who makes them, and how they are used in both military and commercial contexts. Graph detail, Big tech, Ukraine. AI War Cloud Database @SarahCiston
The project builds a continuously updated online platform that presents a taxonomy of AI decision-making systems, tracing their development across sectors and borders. By clicking on a product or company users explore connections between corporations, governments, and technologies and trace direct lines between them. For example, generative AI trained by low-wage workers in the global south, is powering both Google searches and military decision making that decides where drones are deployed, and who lives and dies.
‘AI War Cloud Database’ makes visible the infrastructures and actors behind AI development. By doing so, it challenges the power of private companies and the lack of transparency in how AI is developed and used. For Europe, this is urgent: building digital sovereignty is important, but how we build and manage these systems matters. If we invest in technology without clear values, we risk creating the same problems and dependencies we are trying to avoid. The project forces us to think where we want to go next and what choices we make as users, developers, and investors of AI systems.
Sarah Ciston. Photo credit:@PaigeZangoglia
About Sarah Ciston
Sarah Ciston (USA, born 1983) makes artistic research on queer intersectional approaches to large datasets and machine learning models. They have a PhD in Media Arts + Practice from University of Southern California and are currently a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Internet Studies. Ciston is the author of “A Critical Field Guide for Working with Machine Learning Datasets” and was the research associate for Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler’s “Calculating Empires,” an inspiration for Ciston’s current work on AI decision-making systems used in warfare.
Ciston has been named AI Newcomer in Art by the German Society for Computing and Google Season of Docs Fellow for p5.js/Processing Foundation.
Their art and research has been featured at Akademie der Künste Berlin, Ars Electronica Founding Lab, Chaos Communication Camp, the European Commission, Mozilla Festival, MU Eindhoven, MUTEK, re:publica, Science Gallery London, Scottish AI Alliance, and elsewhere, with writing forthcoming from Leonardo Journal and AI and Society, and a book forthcoming from MIT Press. They are the founder of Code Collective: an approachable, interdisciplinary community for co-learning programming.
More on S+T+ARTS Prize 2025:
Full winners announcement: https://www.artinsiderpr.com/startsprize2025
S+T+ARTS official site: https://starts.eu
Jury and evaluation process: https://ars.electronica.art/starts-prize/en/jury/jury2025/
Sarah Ciston: https://sarahciston.com/
