Artificial Intelligence in the Internet of Health Things: Is the Solution to AI Privacy More AI?

The emerging power of Artificial Intelligence (AI), driven by the exponential growth in computer processing and the digitization of things, has the capacity to bring unfathomable benefits to society. In particular, AI promises to reinvent modern healthcare through devices that can predict, comprehend, learn, and act in astonishing and novel ways. While AI has an enormous potential to produce societal benefits, it will not be a sustainable technology without developing solutions to safeguard privacy while processing ever-growing sets of sensitive data.

This paper considers the tension that exists between privacy and AI and examines how AI and privacy can coexist, enjoying the advantages that each can bring. Rejecting the idea that AI means the end of privacy, and taking a technoprogressive stance, the paper seeks to explore how AI can be actively used to protect individual privacy. It contributes to the literature by reconfiguring AI not as a source of threats and challenges, but rather as a phenomenon that has the potential to empower individuals to protect their privacy.

The first part of the paper sets forward a brief taxonomy of AI and clarifies its role in the Internet of Health Things (IoHT). It then addresses privacy concerns that arise in this context. Next, the paper shifts towards a discussion of Data Protection by Design, exploring how AI can be utilized to meet this standard and in turn preserve individual privacy and data protection rights in the IoHT. Finally, the paper presents a case study of how some are actively using AI to preserve privacy in the IoHT.