Have the Chinese authorities distributed connected pens to students in order to monitor them? ? The students of the Jules Ferry college, in Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois in Essonne, ask us about this story of spy pens. To answer them, we contacted Olivier Lascar, specialist in new technologies, journalist and editor-in-chief of the digital division of Science and Future.
Inès saw on TikTok that “Chinese teachers used spy pens to monitor whether schoolchildren worked during holidays” and she wonders if it’s true. Félix saw on the site Release “that the Chinese government had created a spy pen to encourage students to work“.
Olivier Lascar confirms that “the Chinese government has provided spy pens to students, as part of an experiment“He nevertheless specifies that not all Chinese students are concerned by this test, which has been carried out only for the moment”in the southernmost province of the country.“These pens have a normal appearance, we use them to write on sheets of paper, except that, explains Olivier Lascar, “these pens would be able to record what is written by the student to send it, via a wireless transmission, in real time, to a remote teacher who would thus be able to correct and monitor the student in the process of doing his homeworks.“Even if we don’t know exactly how these pens work technically, Olivier Lascar explains that there are”a field of study which has been studied by engineers and scientists for several years, which is called OCR, for ‘optical character recognition’, which designates those devices which aim to transform handwriting into text“.
Agathe wonders if it’s true”that there are GPS trackers inside these pens.”
No, it’s not true, but Olivier Lascar notes “that there is another school in China, a year ago, which experimented with chips installed in the collars of students’ uniforms and these chips made it possible to know in real time where the students were in the establishment.”
Yannis asks Olivier Lascar if, within the framework of the national plan of the Chinese educational system, a helmet to control the cerebral activity of the children had also been tested. “It’s true“, replies Olivier Lascar, “on the Shanghai side“.
The editor-in-chief of the digital department of Science et Avenir explains that this helmet “looks like a headband that is placed in the middle of the forehead and which is equipped with small sensors that are supposed to record the electrical waves that are naturally born in our brain.“Chinese authorities and officials at the facility where the experiment was conducted explained that”this makes it possible to measure the state of concentration of the pupils.“Thus they would have observed that”students using this device respond better in class and feel more involved.“For Olivier Lascar, this device is”a psychological instrument that aims to play with the minds of children who tell themselves that with this headband on their head, they will work better.“
Laly saw on TikTok, “that the French National Education was going to introduce these pens for the next school year“.
This is false, the government does not plan to experiment with these connected pens in France. Olivier Lascar explains that these devices exist in China because the framework there is very particular with “the all-out use of artificial intelligence in all spheres of society.“He makes it clear that there are a lot of cameras in China,”it is estimated that there are more than 500 million surveillance cameras, that represents more than 50% of the world’s equipment in surveillance cameras.”
Thanks to artificial intelligence in China, we are able to recognize faces, which allows explains Olivier Lascar “to get on a bus without showing your ticket, or to pay in shopping centers without taking out your credit card.“Thus there are experiments that are made to feed this artificial intelligence which needs data to continue to evolve and grow. Olivier Lascar explains that thus in “bringing technology into schools is a way of recording data, enriching databases and therefore perfecting artificial intelligence algorithms.“