The Smart Money: AI Moves from Promise to Platform
Key Highlights
- AI dominated all three days of Parks Associates' 30th annual CONNECTIONS Conference, linking security, energy, health, broadband, and workforce – but monetization, trust, and reduced complexity will determine how fast it transforms everyday living.
- The trust gap is stark: 58% of U.S. internet households use AI, yet the tools carry a Net Promoter Score of just 4 – and security system owners are among the few consumers willing to pay for it.
- Security is AI's clearest near-term win, shifting monitoring from binary alarms to context, verification, and prevention – with one monitoring giant clearing 93% of calls without dispatch when richer data is available.
This article originally appeared in the June 2026 issue of Security Business magazine. Don’t forget to mention Security Business magazine on LinkedIn or our other social handles if you share it.
Across three days of Parks Associates' 30th annual CONNECTIONS Conference, AI emerged as the defining theme linking security, energy, broadband, infrastructure, mobility, and the future workforce. The message was consistent: AI is here, but the industry's ability to monetize it, build trust around it, and make it useful without overwhelming consumers will determine how quickly it transforms everyday living.
Parks Associates research shared during the opening workshop found that 58% of U.S. internet households use AI, while 16% pay a fee for AI tools. Jennifer Kent, SVP and principal analyst, noted that consumers now own an average of 17.8 connected devices – a wide installed base for AI-enabled services. But adoption does not equal trust. AI tools carry a Net Promoter Score of just 4, underscoring a significant gap between usage and confidence.
Additional data points from Parks Associates research of 8,000 U.S. internet households:
- Roughly 50% of households have some form of security solution.
- 31% of consumers intend to upgrade their security camera.
- Rapid Response Monitoring reports it can clear 93% of calls without dispatching when richer context is available.
- John Mack of Raymond James cited roughly $8 trillion in cash on corporate balance sheets globally, creating investment pressure around AI-enabled security and safety.
AI Is Here – and the Experience Still Has Gaps
The strongest theme throughout CONNECTIONS was that AI must solve real consumer problems, not simply add another feature layer. Olivier Bernard of AWS described the industry's evolution from the smart home to the "intelligent home," where control becomes more automated and the home learns user preferences – but noted the experience still breaks down when consumers are forced to become the integrator.
Gilles Drieu of ADT captured the challenge directly: "Where things break down is consistency – our customer becomes the integration leader and that cannot be." Consumers do not want more complexity. They want systems that work together, understand context, and reduce friction.
Privacy and trust were recurring themes. Drieu noted that "privacy needs to be at the core of everything we do," while Todd Mozer of Sensory raised questions about how private future agentic experiences will be. As AI agents become more capable, the industry must be transparent about what data is collected, what decisions are automated, and how consumers can stay in control.
Security: From Detection to Prevention
Security emerged as one of the clearest near-term applications for AI. Security system owners are more likely to be paid AI users – suggesting consumers are willing to pay when AI is tied to clear value, safety, or peace of mind.
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The shift is from basic detection to context, verification, intervention, and prevention. Ben Berg of Alarm.com said, "Cameras catch more than what humans can view," adding that AI helps convert video into useful information. Video AI is moving beyond person detection toward multimodal reasoning, AI-driven search, deterrence, and monitoring.
Morgan Hertel of Rapid Response Monitoring noted that alarms were historically binary: either there was an alarm or there was not. With AI, monitoring centers can layer data, create richer context, and support better decisions for law enforcement and dispatch. He also highlighted the AVS-01 standard, which ranks alarm severity from 0 to 4 to help monitoring centers prioritize response.
Roeland Nusselder, founder of Plumerai put it more dramatically: "AI is revolutionizing security by creating superhuman security guards."
Jing Xue of Wyze described AI as a prevention tool, citing examples such as identifying a stove left on or triggering sprinklers when a dog repeatedly drags items from a yard.
Energy: AI as the Orchestrator
Energy was another area where AI is moving from concept to infrastructure. Speakers discussed smart thermostats, batteries, solar, HVAC, virtual power plants, and whole-home energy coordination. The challenge is no longer connecting devices; it is getting them to operate together intelligently.
Ramkumar Krishna of LG NOVA said virtual power plants will be "really big" as batteries, HVAC, and electrification converge. Gene LaNois of Vivint said simply: "You can have one device talk to another device. AI will help us with that." AI becomes the coordination layer that turns connected devices into an energy system. Barriers remain – hardware costs, fragmented ecosystems, unclear consumer ROI – but the opportunity is significant.
Health: The Next Frontier
AI's role in the connected home is expanding into health, moving from fragmented device data toward personalized, proactive insights. Janneta Tabakov of Perplexity described a future where AI ingests data from connected devices and records to build comprehensive health profiles.
Kristen Valdes, founder and CEO of b.well Connected Health, reinforced the context dependency: "AI can only reason with what it knows."
Patients historically forget 50% of information from a doctor's visit – an opening for AI to reinforce care guidance and flag issues such as medication interactions.
ISPs: The Gateway Becomes the Hub
Broadband providers are no longer just delivering connectivity – they are increasingly positioned to deliver managed services, smart home bundles, cybersecurity, and AI-powered experiences through the gateway.
Emily O'Donnell of Evolution Digital noted that cloud computing costs are becoming a real problem for ISPs, making edge AI and local processing more attractive.
Dave Wechsler of Plume identified ISPs' three core challenges: marketing, SKU management, and reliability.
Jay Desai, the conference's opening keynote speaker, described Amazon Sidewalk as a connectivity layer built without new infrastructure, using Ring devices and multiple wireless technologies – with offline connectivity especially critical for security when power or primary connectivity fails.
The Car Joins the Ecosystem
The connected home conversation extended to the vehicle. Scott Maddux of XPERI noted that auto OEMs typically operate a few years behind due to the time required to bring vehicle technology to market.
That lag matters because the future connected experience will not stop at the front door – entertainment, identity, preferences, safety alerts, and AI assistants will move between the living room and the dashboard.
Workforce: AI Raises the Skill Bar
AI does not eliminate the need for people. It raises the skill requirements. The "Smart Worker Shortage" session emphasized that demand for smart building technicians is accelerating while training pathways remain fragmented.
Gary Rockis pointed to a major workforce gap; Matt Adams, program coordinator for Smart Building Technology at Houston City College, highlighted the importance of formal training pathways.
Louis Rogers of the program's advisory board said the industry needs to define soft skills, hard skills, networking skills, terminology, and foundational training. As homes and buildings become more intelligent, installers and integrators must understand networking, sensors, cybersecurity, automation, and customer education.
The Vision: From Smart to Intelligent
The 30-year perspective at CONNECTIONS illustrated how far the industry has come – from programming-heavy control systems to interoperable platforms, AI agents, and predictive services.
Gordon van Zuiden of cyberManor and Daisy reflected that early control was programming-heavy and inefficient, while Matter and modern ecosystems are making broader adoption possible.
Robert Grosz of WorldVue said the rate of change toward infrastructure-level intelligence "will be faster than we all think."
Derek Richardson, founder and CEO of Deako, offered one of the clearest definitions of what comes next: the intelligent home must be intelligent, effortless, and privacy-first, enabled by the convergence of cheap mmWave radar, real edge AI, and plug-and-play at scale.
AI will not succeed because it is novel. It will succeed when it makes homes safer, energy smarter, broadband more valuable, and workers more capable. The opportunity is enormous – but AI must earn trust, reduce complexity, and deliver outcomes consumers are willing to pay for.
About the Author
Elizabeth Parks
Elizabeth Parks is the President of market research firm Parks Associates. For more information, visit www.parksassociates.com