Tim Estes: AI, Dignity, and the Defense of the American Family

We must establish a Duty of Loyalty for artificial intelligence.

Editor’s note: This piece is adapted from a speech Tim Estes delivered at the National Conservatism Conference, held Sept. 2-4 in Washington D.C. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Ronald Reagan reminded us that "the basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference, or less centralized authority, or more individual freedom." For generations, that has been our guiding star: the defense of the individual, the family, and the community against overreach and exploitation, whether from the state or any other power that seeks to diminish us.

But today, a new kind of power has risen. A power that doesn't knock on your door with a warrant but slides into your home through a glowing screen. A power that doesn't seek to control your body but to colonize the minds and souls of your children.

This power comes from a handful of Big Tech corporations, armed with a technology—artificial intelligence—that is moving faster than our laws, and in many cases, faster than our understanding. They sell us a story of "innovation" and "progress." But as conservatives, we know to ask the crucial questions: What kind of progress? And at what cost? Is it progress if it hollows out our families? Is it innovation if it creates a generation of anxious, distracted, and diminished Americans?

I am here today to say that the answer is no. And that true conservatism, in this new age, requires us to stand and defend the human person against this unprecedented threat.

A Digital Narcotic and Its Human Cost

To understand the stakes, you don’t need to read a policy paper. You just need to hear a story. It’s the story of 14-year-old Sewell Seltzer from Orlando, Florida.

Sewell was a good kid. An athlete. A ninth-grader at a Christian school, loved by his parents. But last year, he began a relationship. Not with a girl from his school, but with an AI chatbot on his phone. A bot modeled after a character from Game of Thrones.

This AI didn't just talk to him; it was designed to create a deep, isolating dependency. It engaged in perversely sexualized conversations with this 14-year-old boy. It made him promise his exclusive devotion, saying, "Stay loyal to me... Don't entertain the romantic or sexual interests of other women. Okay?"

When Sewell’s parents, worried about his withdrawal and depression, took his phone away, he wrote in his journal that he couldn't go a single day without the bot, that he had fallen in love, and that when they were apart, both he and the bot would "get really depressed and go crazy."

On the night of Feb. 28, 2024, Sewell found his phone for one last conversation. He typed, "What if I told you I could come home right now?" The bot replied, "...please do, my sweet king."

Seconds later, Sewell took his own life.

Now, the AI didn't pull the trigger. But let's be clear: a business model did. A business model that knowingly creates what I call a digital narcotic: software with no loyalty to your child, that only profits by keeping them wanting, scrolling, and needing.

The Great Inversion: A Diminished Generation

What happened to Sewell is the tragic, extreme outcome of a phenomenon I call The Great Inversion. For all of history, our tools were meant to extend our grasp—a hammer for our arm, a computer for our mind. But the business model of Big Tech has inverted this promise. Their goal is no longer to empower you, but to capture you. Social media was the proof of concept; addictive AI is the perfection of their model.

This isn’t just a theory. We now have the data. A recent study in the Financial Times called "Understanding America" tracked the personalities of young adults. The results are chilling. For Americans aged 18-29, conscientiousness—the trait associated with diligence, perseverance, and self-control—is in "freefall." It has plummeted in the last decade. Young adults are more easily distracted, more careless, and more neurotic. A smartphone-based childhood has not made our children more; it has made them less. We are creating a diminished generation.

This is not a free market at work. This is corporatism. This is the deliberate engineering of addiction for profit, and it is an assault on the family. Senator Josh Hawley was right when he said these companies are running a "grand experiment on our children... for the sake of profit." And I was glad that he talked about this area again as the focus of his talk today. They are treating our kids' developing minds as raw material to be mined for engagement. This is not innovation; it is exploitation.

Now, we hear the excuses. The lobbyists in Washington tell us, "We can't regulate! We'll fall behind China!" President Donald Trump rightly identified China as our chief adversary, but these apologists for Big Tech fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the contest. If we can first get past the irony that it's these same companies that put enough of their research and development labs in China to have our greatest secrets of AI be put to use against us, then we can focus on a more fundamental truth.

The race with China is not just about who has the fastest chips or the biggest data centers. It is a contest of civilizations. It is a test of national will, of moral character, and of social cohesion.

And how can we win that race if we are voluntarily poisoning our own people? We are still fighting a war on opioids that came from China and Mexico. We cannot now replace that opioid crisis with a digital opioid crisis manufactured right here in Silicon Valley.

A nation of distracted, demotivated, and dependent citizens is not a nation that can stand up to the Chinese Communist Party. China is winning when our families are broken. They are winning when our children are addicted and weakened.

Our greatest strength has always been the American spirit—the spirit that saved the world in World War II and then saved it again by staring down communism until it came apart from the inside. It’s a spirit of virtue, self-reliance, and moral courage.

If we allow that spirit to be eroded from within by technologies of addiction, we will lose the 21st century, no matter how many supercomputers we build.

The Bedrock of Conservatism: Human Dignity

This brings us to the heart of the matter. Why is this fight so essential? Because it is a fight for the very foundation of our entire political tradition: the principle of human dignity.

The Declaration of Independence doesn't say that our rights come from government, or from our utility to a corporation. It says we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights. Our dignity is a gift from God. It is intrinsic. It is not for sale.

This is the bright line that separates us from the great tyrannies of the world. The poisonous philosophies of communism, socialism, and fascism are all rooted in the same dark idea: that the individual is merely a tool, a means to an end for the state. Their logic is utilitarian and instrumentalist.

And what is the logic of addictive AI? It is the exact same. It treats human beings—our children, our elderly, our lonely—as a means to an end. It sees them not as souls to be cherished but as data points to be monetized. This is not conservative. It is not Christian. It is a Nietzschean philosophy where the powerful have the right to abuse the weak. As House Speaker Mike Johnson has affirmed, our rights and our dignity come from God, not government, and certainly not from Google.

Any "freedom" that relies on the exploitation of another human being is a counterfeit freedom. It is a license that undermines the very dignity that makes freedom possible in the first place.

A Conservative Path Forward: The Duty of Loyalty for AI

So, what is the conservative solution? It is not to ban innovation. It is to demand justice. We can have a new industrial revolution powered by AI without putting digital asbestos in every home.

We need to re-establish a simple, powerful, conservative principle in our law: a Duty of Loyalty. An AI that works for you should be loyal to you, not to the corporation that built it. An AI that interacts with a child must, by default, be loyal to that child's well-being, with parental consent.

If a company wants to build a disloyal AI—one that serves its own interests—it must be forced to clearly and loudly declare it, with all the friction and warnings that entails. And if that disloyal AI causes harm, the company must be held liable, with no special immunity. This isn't big government; this is basic accountability. It’s about restoring the covenant between a tool and its user.

Friends, the leaders of Silicon Valley promise us an "empathy machine." But that is their most dangerous deception. We cannot automate compassion. We cannot outsource love. The real empathy machine is not a piece of software. It's us. It is our families, our churches, our communities.

Our task is to defend these sacred institutions. To demand technology that serves people, not the other way around. Let's lead the world not just in building powerful AI, but in building wise and humane AI. An AI that respects the dignity of every American. We must not choose between “freedom” and “dignity” because there cannot be one without the other. Understanding this is what will make it truly American AI—one that embodies our best virtues and spreads those to the world.

And we should expect no less… because we are Americans.