Amazon-hosted AI tool for UK military recruitment 'carries risk of data breach'

An artificial intelligence tool hosted by Amazon and designed to boost UK Ministry of Defence recruitment puts defence personnel at risk of being identified publicly, according to a government assessment. Data used in the automated system to improve the drafting of defence job adverts and attract more diverse candidates by improving the inclusiveness language, includes names, roles and emails of military personnel and is stored by Amazon in the US. This means "a data breach may have concerning consequences, ie identification of defence personnel", according to documents detailing government AI systems published for the first time today. The risk has been judged to be "low" and the MoD said "robust safeguards" have been put in place by the suppliers, Textio, Amazon Web Services and Amazon GuardDuty, a threat detection service. But it is one of several risks acknowledged by the government about its use of AI tools in the public sector in a tranche of documents released to improve transparency about the central government's use of algorithms. Official declarations about how the algorithms work stress that mitigations and safeguards are in place to tackle risks, as ministers push to use AI to boost UK economic productivity and, in the words of the technology secretary, Peter Kyle, on Tuesday, "bring public services back from the brink".