--- description: Find out why Becky Pringle made TIME’s list of the most influential people in artificial intelligence. title: TIME100 AI 2024: Becky Pringle image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6679bfecd8e96491/698a5a96457a523dd8d6ab87/TIME100-AI-2024-THINKERS_Becky-Pringle-NEW.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- Sep 05, 2024 # Becky Pringle by [Andrew R. Chow](/author/andrew-r-chow/) ## Andrew R. Chow Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Correspondent  Photo-Illustration by TIME (Source: Daniel Boczarski—Getty Images) Few parts of society have been impacted by the rise of AI in a more tangible way than education. Tools like ChatGPT have helped students learn, but also facilitated cheating and [threatened students’ abilities](https://slejournal.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40561-024-00316-7#:~:text=Studies%20highlight%20that%20although%20AI,dependent%20on%20AI%2Dgenerated%20content. "undefined") to develop critical thinking techniques. Some AI learning tools that promised to increase student productivity and “democratize” education ended up failing and [burning giant holes ](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/01/us/ai-chatbot-los-angeles-schools.html#:~:text=Chatbot%20Falls%20Flat%3A%20Los%20Angeles,months%20later%2C%20the%20company%20collapsed. "undefined")in school district budgets. Becky Pringle, who leads the National Education Association—the largest labor union in the US.—has been watching these developments closely. As a public school teacher for three decades, Pringle saw how new waves of technology unsettled but then aided teaching. In order to aid the responsible deployment of artificial intelligence in classrooms, she convened a task force that [released a roadmap](https://www.nea.org/resource-library/artificial-intelligence-education "undefined") exploring AI professional development, mitigating student harms, and equity in access. The best practices, Pringle believes, will not be issued top-down, but emerge out of the first waves of schools that are excited to study and integrate AI. These best approaches might then spread through the nearly 3 million teachers in the NEA, who teach tens of millions of students across the country. “We cannot approach this technology in a way that eliminates the teacher,” Pringle tells TIME. “We want to think about it in terms of enhancing the educational experience.” [_Buy your copy of the TIME100 AI issue here_](https://magazineshop.us/TIME100AI "undefined") ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-ai-2024/7012896/becky-pringle/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-ai-2024/7012896/becky-pringle/"},"headline":"Becky Pringle","datePublished":"2024-09-05T11:07:26.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T11:54:25.241Z","description":"","url":"https://time.com/collections/time100-ai-2024/7012896/becky-pringle/","keywords":["Tech"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6679bfecd8e96491/698a5a96457a523dd8d6ab87/TIME100-AI-2024-THINKERS_Becky-Pringle-NEW.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Andrew R. Chow","jobTitle":"Correspondent","url":"https://time.com/author/andrew-r-chow/"}],"creator":"Andrew R. Chow","articleSection":"Business","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6679bfecd8e96491/698a5a96457a523dd8d6ab87/TIME100-AI-2024-THINKERS_Becky-Pringle-NEW.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/business/","name":"Business"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-tech/","name":"Tech"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-ai-2024/7012896/becky-pringle/","name":"Becky Pringle"}}]}] ```