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Sitting in the exam room wearing smart glasses that look just like an ordinary horn-rimmed pair, a test taker taps the frame.
Tiny ultra-compact lenses embedded in the glasses capture the test paper and transmit it to a linked artificial intelligence program on a smartphone. AI analyzes the questions, comes up with the correct answers and delivers them to the examinee in real time via the display on the glasses’ lenses.
The education sector and testing agencies are on high alert with the entry of smart glasses, combined with generative AI, into exam halls as a new cheating tool. The technology has gotten sophisticated enough to easily deceive test proctors, and the lack of related systematic regulations has fueled a surge in cheating cases.
Mokpo Police Station in South Jeolla Province on Thursday said it booked a man, 29, on charges of attempting to cheat using smart glasses on the qualification exam for electrical industrial engineers, a violation of the National Technical Qualification Act.
The smart glasses he allegedly wore on the day of the test on May 24 had AI solve problems and display the answers on the lens when he touched the frame.
Earlier in the same month, the Gwangju District Prosecutors Office filed summary charges against a 40-something man who tried to cheat using smart glasses on the qualification exam for firefighting equipment engineers. Two other instances of cheating using smart glasses were also detected during the Test of English for International Communication in the same month.
The latest smart glasses have ultra-small components that make the glasses practically indistinguishable from ordinary ones, but they connect to AI to send necessary information to users in real time.
“While technology in the past was limited to simply recognizing images as text and comparing them, the latest smart glasses have built-in chips that can autonomously code and give optimal answers, meaning users can do just about anything they want with smart glasses,” said Choi Byoung-ho, a professor at the Human-inspired AI Research Lab of Korea University.
“We’ve reached a stage where, technically speaking, it’s no longer difficult to create apps specialized for specific exams for use in cheating,” he said.
To respond to rapid advances in smart glasses technology, testing agencies are devising ways to fight high-tech cheating. On July 1, the Korea Institute of Curriculum and Evaluation (KICE) announced a plan for this year’s College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT), also known as the Suneung, and added smart glasses to the list of prohibited items.
“While bringing in any electronic device was originally banned, smart glasses have been explicitly added to the prohibited list,” a KICE source said. “Through discussions with the Ministry of Education and city and provincial offices of education, we’ve decided to strengthen training for this year’s CSAT monitors and convey related guidance to schools.”
The ministry affiliate National Institute of Korean History has also prohibited smart glasses for takers of the Korean history exam. Universities are also holding discussions on the matter.
A Korea University source said, “We are discussing the addition of guidelines for smart glasses to those for AI.”
Experts stressed the urgent need for government-level norms to regulate smart glasses, covering everything from the manufacturing stage to management of testing sites.
“I believe that the government must devise regulations from multiple angles,” said Moon Hyung-nam, the dean of Sookmyung Women’s University’s College of Global Convergence and head of the AI Education Association. “Cheating on exams is merely the starting point for misuse; there is major concern that it could be exploited later for crimes such as industrial espionage or leakage of corporate secrets.”
Kim Myung-joo, the director of the AI Safety Institute, also advocated for more oversight.
“Institutional oversight procedures must be tightened, such as requiring a camera activity indicator during the manufacturing stage to allow third parties to immediately detect smart glasses, as well as obtaining a written confirmation from test takers on prohibited items prior to an exam,” he said.
By Jang Hyeon-eun, staff reporter; Ki Min-do, staff reporter
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