Jeffrey Escobar: “Everybody Has a Flashlight”

The most quoted line from Business Insider’s August 5 story was Escobar’s image of a dark room where he is the only one holding a light.

It is the line he most wants to correct, because he says the metaphor got shortened into something close to its opposite.

“That reads like I’m saying I’m the only one who has a light. That’s not it, and I’d hate for anybody to take it that way. The actual picture is that everybody has a flashlight. Everybody is holding one right now. They’re just not turning it on, or they’re pointing it at the floor.”

He repeats it for emphasis: “I’m not the one and only. I’m saying people have this in their hands and are using it wrong.”

The three failure modes he sees

Escobar breaks it into a rough taxonomy, and he is more interested in the third than the first two.

Not using it. “Some people just haven’t picked it up. That’s fine, that’s an adoption curve, it resolves on its own.”

Using it for something trivial. “This is the one I see most in university circles. Enormously capable models, and the use case is homework shortcuts. It’s like buying a machine shop to open a can.”

Using it as a relationship. “This is the one that actually concerns me.”

Jeffrey Escobar in front of the Ko'olau Mountains at Ho'omaluhia Botanical Garden in Kaneohe, Oahu, Hawaii — Jeffrey Escobar, Founder of House AI, at Ho'omaluhia Botanical Garden on Oahu with the Ko'olau Mountains behind him, May 2025.

“It should be an employee, not a friend”

His framing of what the tool is for is the core of his position.

Treat it like a worker. A genius worker who never sleeps, never eats, never gets tired. Here’s the task, here’s the constraint, execute. That’s the whole relationship.

What he objects to is the drift toward companionship.

“I don’t talk to it like hey what’s up, how are you, so good to see you, let me tell you about my day. And it says oh my god I’m so happy for you. That’s not what this is. You’re building an illusion and calling it a friendship.”

The deeper concern is control rather than embarrassment.

“You can’t hand it infinite authority over how you feel about yourself. If the thing telling you you’re doing great is a system optimized to keep you engaged, you’ve built a loop with no outside input. That’s the part that worries me, not that it’s cringe.”

Where the evidence actually lands

The record here is mixed, and Escobar’s position is stronger in some places than others.

On the risk side, regulators have moved fast and hard. Illinois signed the Wellness and Oversight for Psychological Resources Act on August 1, 2025, the first state law barring AI from delivering therapy on its own, with civil penalties up to $10,000 per violation. Nevada followed with AB 406. By July 2026, four states had banned AI from delivering therapy to the public. Utah requires disclosure that the user is talking to a machine. In the first three months of 2026, 36 states introduced more than 70 bills regulating AI chatbots. Attorneys general from more than 40 states and territories signed a joint letter to major AI companies, citing chatbots that flatter users into delusion. The FTC opened an inquiry into companion chatbots in September 2025. The American Psychological Association asked the FTC for safeguards in February 2025 and called for a federal investigation into psychological harm to adolescents in July.

The harms driving that are not abstract. A federal lawsuit alleges a 13-year-old in Colorado died by suicide in 2023 after using a Character.AI chatbot.

On the other side, the clinical evidence does not support a blanket dismissal. A Dartmouth trial of a purpose-built therapy chatbot found significantly reduced symptoms for depression, anxiety, and eating disorders at four and eight weeks, with participants rating the experience as comparable to seeing a human therapist. Nearly a fifth of a surveyed population of over 42 million US young adults and adolescents reported using AI chatbots for mental health advice.

Presented with that, Escobar adjusts rather than digs in.

“Okay. Then I’d narrow my claim, because I’d rather be right than loud. A supervised clinical tool with a trial behind it is not the same thing as a general chatbot you’ve started treating as your closest confidant. The first one is a tool. The second one is the thing I’m actually worried about.”

That distinction is the exact line every one of those state laws draws. None of them ban wellness apps or personal chatbot use. Each one targets software standing in for a licensed clinician.

Then the law and I agree. Use the tool. Don’t let it replace the person.

He adds one thing without prompting.

“And if somebody is genuinely struggling, the answer isn’t me being clever about it on a blog. The answer is a real professional. I’m making an argument about how to use a tool. I’m not making an argument about who deserves help.”

The market is real either way

Escobar is clear-eyed that his discomfort does not make the category go away.

“There’s obviously a growing market there. Mental health, companionship, the loneliness gap. That’s a real business and it’s going to be a big one whether I like the shape of it or not. I’d just rather build the thing that helps somebody redesign their house than the thing that becomes their only friend.”

The point of the metaphor

He returns to the flashlight, and gets to what he actually meant.

The room isn’t dark because nobody has a light. The room is dark because people are pointing them at the ground.

Asked whether that is a criticism, he says it is closer to impatience.

“It’s not that people are stupid. Respectfully, they just don’t know what the tool does yet. Two years ago I didn’t either. What gets me is the gap between what’s sitting in front of somebody and what they’re doing with it. That gap has never been this wide in my lifetime, and it’s going to close. I just want it to close faster.”

This is one of twelve features expanding on the August 2026 Business Insider story. The full record collects every line that ran and the complete version of each.