Would you trust Amazon Alexa to babysit your kids? A somewhat surprising number of parents say yes. In a recent survey by ASecureLife.com, one in five parents said they would trust their children with Amazon's virtual assistant in their absence.
"Even though Amazon sells a kid-friendly version of the Echo Dot that can safely entertain your kids, we wouldn't recommend using it to replace a babysitter who can be there to help if any emergencies arise while you're not home," the site cautioned.
ASecureLife.com polled 300 Americas earlier this month to find out how much people trust smart speakers and other connected home gadgets and their biggest concerns about these devices.
The survey also indicated that Americans are most worried about being monitored online by criminals, then the government, then businesses. Seventy-five percent said they're concerned about cybercriminal snoops, 65 percent are worried about Big Brother, and around half fear they're being monitored by businesses.
Meanwhile, two-thirds of respondents (66 percent) said they believe their smart devices are recording them. And they're not wrong.
As Bloomberg revealed last week, Amazon has thousands of people listening to Alexa voice recordings every day. During a nine-hour shift, these employees listen to up to 1,000 voice recordings to identify the human speech Alexa doesn't understand and help the virtual assistant better respond to similar queries in future.
Meanwhile, many continue to use smart home technologies despite having privacy and security concerns about them, ASecureLife.com found. Seventy-five percent of respondents said they believe smart homes "can be easily hacked," but 33 percent still use this technology.
On the topic of Alexa the babysitter, the folks at ASecureLife.com said they found it interesting that around 20 percent of parents would be willing to leave their kids alone with the virtual assistant.
"With all the distrust around modern technology, we thought this was a notable contradiction," they wrote.