Danielle Boyer, an enrolled citizen of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, was named to the 2026 TIME100 AI list, placing her among the most influential leaders in artificial intelligence. She was named an Innovator, alongside people building the tools and ideas shaping how AI gets used.
Boyer didn’t come up through a typical tech pipeline. In 2019, while she was still a teenager, she started The STEAM Connection. She created the organization to give Indigenous kids, who rarely see themselves reflected in the tech world, free access to STEAM education and robotics. The nonprofit has since reached over a million young people worldwide, handed out more than 25,000 free robot kits, and built a Make-A-Robot platform with close to 48,000 users.
Her best-known project is SkoBots, small wearable AI-powered robots that teach Anishinaabemowin, also called Ojibwemowin. Boyer built the first one in 2021, working with educators, language keepers, and young people to create a tool that supported what language teachers were already doing in class. The robot senses when a kid picks it up, lights up, and talks using prerecorded voices pulled straight from the communities that use it. A wearable strap clips it onto a kid’s shoulder so it goes wherever they go.
Its shell carries Anishinaabe woodland floral patterns drawn from animals native to Boyer’s homelands, made from recycled materials, with most parts coming out of an in-house 3D printing setup. Tribes can request their own designs too. Some ask for clan animals or regalia patterns worked into the shell. Others want the lights and motion dialed back for kids who are sensitive to that kind of stimulation.
Boyer skipped the text-to-speech and large language models used in other robots and used recordings from language speakers and elders, so pronunciation, dialect, and small cultural details would stay intact. Her grandmother voiced the first robot. Kids voice the newer ones now, so they can learn by hearing their own peers and community speak. The robots don’t need internet access either, which helps in rural and underfunded tribal areas where connectivity is scarce or unreliable.
Her groundbreaking work has earned her well-deserved recognition and accolades. She’s a National Geographic Young Explorer, an Echoing Green Fellow, and a two-time MIT Solve Fellow. She’s spoken at the White House, at UNESCO headquarters, and at the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous issues, including data sovereignty and ethical AI. A documentary following her work has picked up recognition from the Webby Awards, Sundance, Tribeca X, and SXSW. And she’s not slowing down; she’s planning to study intellectual property law next, a fitting next step given how much of her advocacy comes down to who has the power and the right to determine how Indigenous knowledge and technology meet.
On September 15, 2026, Boyer gave the opening toast at the 3rd annual TIME100 AI Impact Dinner. She spoke about how a lot of the technology she’d encountered in her work hurt more than it helped, but the harm was often ignored for the sake of progress. It pushed her to start asking one simple question, of herself and of anyone building AI who would listen: “Progress for whom?”
Other honorees who followed Boyer’s opening remarks leaned into different angles of the same question. Joseph Gordon-Levitt pushed for tighter regulation and argued some AI companies should be shut down if they can’t meet basic safety standards. Suchi Saria talked about the potential of using AI to help prevent fatal patient outcomes. Boyer’s question stood apart because the people she was talking about were not the AI tech bros, investors, or executives, or even us, but generations yet to come.
“My grandmother once told me that no decision belongs only to the moment in which we make it,” she said. “Long after we’re gone, someone we will never meet may still be living with what we chose to do today.”
For Boyer, that means treating AI as something her descendants will inherit and being mindful of how today’s progress will shape our futures.
“The decisions we make about artificial intelligence today will outlive every person in this room,” Boyer told the crowd. “That’s crazy, right? So let’s build things the right way. Let’s build so that seven generations from now, our descendants can look back at this moment and thank us, rather than have to recover from us.”
Discover more from Red Pop! News
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
