Smart glasses might seem like a great way of cheating on exams, and technically speaking, they are, but before you use a pair to unethically ace a test, you’re going to have to weigh some consequences—potentially criminal ones.
According to the JoongAng Daily, an English-language newspaper in South Korea, a man is facing criminal charges after using smart glasses to cheat on a state-run fire engineer test in May. He was reportedly discovered when an administrator of the test noticed the reflection of light on the lenses, and the man pretty much copped to the entire thing, telling investigators, “I developed an AI application that works with the smart glasses and wanted to see whether it could generate correct answers in a real exam.”
Per JoongAng Daily, the Gwangju District Prosecutors’ Office says the use of smart glasses during the test violates the National Technical Qualifications Act. It’s unclear how severe the penalty may be.
This isn’t the first instance where smart glasses have been at the center of an academic cheating scandal, but it’s a particularly eyebrow-raising one given the context of the exam; this was a test for a fire protection engineer license. Given the public safety of it all, it’s fair to say that someone’s competency could be a contributing factor in whether people live or die.
This isn’t an isolated incident, as the JoongAng Daily notes. Two other men in South Korea were reportedly caught using smart glasses to cheat in national qualification exams in May, and there have been plenty of other instances globally. In short: smart glasses are a problem in academic/instructional settings, and even if the technology is banned, that prohibition isn’t always easy to enforce. Many smart glasses, like those made by Even Realities, look just like regular glasses, and in order to spot them, instructors need to actually know what to look for.
In the U.S., there aren’t any top-down federal regulations on using smart glasses during exams, but they have been banned on an organizational basis, namely by the College Board, which administers the SATs, and various schools and universities. According to the JoongAng Daily, officials from state licensing exam administrators convened an emergency meeting following the incident and are already working to formulate concrete rules against smart glasses’ use and potential violations.
It’s safe to say that smart glasses are increasingly becoming a cheat-at-your-own-risk kind of gadget.