What a mom and CEO tells her kids every day amid all the AI cheating

CNBC is now accepting nominations for the 2027 Changemakers List.

Kate Ryder has no doubts about the extent to which AI will transform business models like her healthcare company Maven. An event for founders she attended roughly three years ago run by one of her firm’s biggest VC investors, Sequoia — where Greg Brockman of OpenAI and the CEO of Amazon Web Services were both in attendance — quickly made Ryder realize how this AI moment was not going to be just one more tech hype cycle.

“I remember leaving that ‘Base Camp’ having asked them this directly … to tell me why this isn’t a hype cycle, and then having them describe to me the exponential way in which the models were getting smarter and better, and why it wasn’t going to stop,” Ryder recalls on the latest episode of the “CNBC Changemakers” podcast with Julia Boorstin.

Ryder was named to the inaugural CNBC Changemakers list in 2024.

The company, like many in 2026, has faced two key issues with AI deployment. Maven was running up against its full-year AI budget limit well before December, and it has yet to see an overall return on investment from the effort, Ryder said during the podcast interview, which was recorded in mid-August.

But ever since that meeting with the AI CEOs, Ryder has been incorporating AI into the business model at Maven in multiple ways and seeing tangible benefits across the organization. AI has generated significant savings on the administrative side of the business, with some basic workstreams that had cost as much as $200,000 a year now down to as little as $2, she said. AI is also now writing all of Maven’s code, she added. Long-term, Ryder is convinced patient-facing AI will improve healthcare for women, especially given the large gaps in data that have always led to frustration for women seeking treatment for a variety of health needs, from fertility to menopause, areas in which Maven specializes.

As Ryder’s experimentation with AI has progressed, she’s been using it much more in her personal life too, including with her children. But there Ryder has drawn a red line when it comes to how children need to learn.

As major school districts like New York City ban AI for grades below high school for at least one year amid widespread use of AI for cheating and years of deteriorating test scores for students across the U.S., Ryder has a simple, strict message for her kids.

“What I already tell my kids all the time is you’ve got to read every day. You’ve got to read. That’s how you really become an independent thinker in this world,” Ryder said.

The pandemic disrupted learning for millions of students, contributing to setbacks in reading achievement over the past decade that many schools are still working to address. With concerns about literacy levels persisting, Ryder’s approach to encouraging active learning and critical thinking may resonate with parents navigating a rapidly changing educational environment.

“I’m pushing my kids hard. You can’t outsource thinking. Read, understand characters, read tons of fiction, understand character development and empathy and the complexity of those stories, understand how to question things … be curious. It’s so important, more than ever,” she said.

According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, 40% of fourth graders and 33% of eighth graders scored below the NAEP Basic reading level. Only five states and the District of Columbia experienced meaningful gains in reading achievement between 2022 and 2025. Nationally, students remain nearly half a grade level behind pre-pandemic reading performance, according to Harvard University’s Education Scorecard.

Researchers point to a range of factors behind literacy challenges, from educational inequities and learning disruptions to differences in access to resources. More recently, the rise of AI has introduced new questions about how students learn and engage with reading and writing.

Some educators worry that students may rely on AI tools to write essays, answer questions or summarize assigned readings rather than working through material themselves. At the same time, others argue that AI can be used to support learning when incorporated thoughtfully into the classroom.

The research on AI’s effects on children’s learning remains limited, and educators continue to debate how the technology should be integrated into schools. With a single teacher tasked with meeting the needs of an entire classroom, providing individualized attention can be challenging. Many educational platforms are turning to AI, using the technology to offer students personalized practice, feedback and guidance on specific subjects. 

In 2025, OpenAI introduced ChatGPT’s Study Mode, a feature designed to help students work through problems step by step rather than simply providing answers. Now available across ChatGPT plans, the tool uses guided questions, quizzes and feedback to encourage active participation and critical thinking. 

A 2026 National Bureau of Economic Research working paper examined a two-year randomized trial of Khan Academy’s AI tutor, Khanmigo, in 18 Tennessee middle schools. Students assigned access to the tool saw math-achievement gains of about 1.3 national percentile ranks per term. Khanmigo was designed to coach students through problems rather than just give them the answers. Researchers still found that those gains resembled the progress students make using existing Khan Academy video practice without AI assistance. 

Parents are trying to stay informed about how AI is being used. According to Pew Research Center, most parents of teens ages 13 to 17 are aware that their child uses AI chatbots and discuss the technology with them. About eight in ten parents say they are comfortable with their teen using chatbots to search for information. 

In 2025, 54% of students said they had used AI for school, according to RAND Corporation research. Another RAND survey of 1,214 U.S. young people ages 12 to 29 found that 62% had used AI for homework by the end of 2025. Students are aware of the potential downside. In the same RAND survey, 67% agreed that increased AI use in school could harm students’ critical-thinking skills. 

Students shouldn’t avoid AI altogether. Instead, educators say the challenge is using the technology without skipping the parts of learning that build foundational skills. Students are still encouraged to work through mistakes, develop new ideas and keep trying when they get something wrong. 

And that is an approach that Ryder, who was a business journalist before she went into venture capital and ultimately founded Maven, is incorporating into her family life, too. She still describes herself as “a writer by background” and says that informs her approach to AI today. “I still write a lot,” she said during the podcast. That includes memos, corporate communications, and Maven blogs. While she will allow AI to write an email draft, with almost all of her writing, “I write it all myself first, and then I have AI go over it,” she said. “AI is my kind of helper versus I’m asking AI to author anything that’s important,” she added.

And during a recent family trip to France, she found a new way to bring AI into the education of her children which she sees as positive that bridges her role as parent and teacher. While visiting one of Napoleon’s former hunting lodges, she turned to the tech tool to help her tell the story, using AI to help make a history lesson “feel more real” for her children.

“AI has become my guide in teaching my kids about history,” Ryder said. “It helps tell them those stories and helps me make sense of the world for them. … that is a total gift as a parent,” she said.

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