--- description: Find out why Cynthia Breazeal made TIME’s list of the most influential people in artificial intelligence. title: TIME100 AI 2025: Cynthia Breazeal image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltdb14945c8c66898f/6998c92347fe51425555bff0/Cynthia-Breazeal.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- Aug 26, 2025 # Cynthia Breazeal Dean for digital learning, MIT by [Tharin Pillay](/author/tharin-pillay/) ## Tharin Pillay Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Pillay is an editorial fellow at TIME.  Photo-Illustration by TIME (Courtesy Photo) Cynthia Breazeal founded the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education (MIT RAISE) program to set kids up with the skills for a future in the age of AI. In 2021, MIT RAISE launched the [Day of AI](http://dayofai.org/our-story/ "undefined"), an initiative that works with schools to create AI literacy programs. To date, it’s developed hundreds of hours of open-source curriculum materials for K-12 learners, reaching an estimated 30,000 teachers and 1 million students across 170 countries—and doubling its reach every year, according to Breazeal. RAISE also orchestrates an [AI hackathon](http://raise.mit.edu/global-ai-hackathon-2025 "undefined"), a [summer program](http://futuremakers.mit.edu "undefined"), and other initiatives that encourage students to use what they’ve learned to design AI applications. In its teen-geared FutureMakers program, for example, an all-girl team—one of whom had a family member suffer from a stroke—created an app that uses facial recognition to screen for early warning signs. “These kids are pulling from their lived experiences to create incredible things," she says. Breazeal’s goal is to impart an “eyes-wide-open optimism” that balances an appreciation of what AI can do with an understanding of its social impacts and its limits. In her experience, kids often intuitively understand this. “When we're working with actual kids in these actual contexts, you get some hope," she says. Breazeal is acutely aware of how design decisions shape our relationship to technology: nearly 30 years ago, her research on human-machine interaction helped to launch the field of social robotics. Her hope is that equipping the next generation with a deep understanding of how design impacts experience will enable them to build safe, pro-social tech. “We are deeply social, emotional, cognitive, multidimensional creatures,” she says. “The more that we can design technologies that support all of us, the more deeply we can engage, and not surprisingly, the more successful we are." Cynthia Breazeal: The 100 Most Influential People in AI 2025 ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-ai-2025/7305873/cynthia-breazeal/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-ai-2025/7305873/cynthia-breazeal/"},"headline":"Cynthia Breazeal","datePublished":"2025-08-26T19:57:37.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T11:54:44.647Z","description":"","url":"https://time.com/collections/time100-ai-2025/7305873/cynthia-breazeal/","keywords":["Tech","list","franchise","Magazine","Special Project","sponsorshipblock","Accolades","TIME100 AI 2025"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltdb14945c8c66898f/6998c92347fe51425555bff0/Cynthia-Breazeal.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Tharin Pillay","jobTitle":"Pillay is an editorial fellow at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/tharin-pillay/"}],"creator":"Tharin Pillay","articleSection":"Business","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltdb14945c8c66898f/6998c92347fe51425555bff0/Cynthia-Breazeal.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-2025/7305873/cynthia-breazeal/","name":"Cynthia Breazeal"}}]}] ```