HONG KONG — A medical school applicant in Taiwan wore smart eyeglasses to cheat. In Hong Kong, a recent medical graduate was suspected of pulling patient data without permission. These two incidents, separated by a short stretch of sea, share a common thread: neither was primarily a technology failure.
Both were failures of ethics. For months, educators across Hong Kong, Taiwan, and mainland China have watched a pattern emerge.
Students and professionals, equipped with increasingly powerful AI tools, have used them irresponsibly. The Taiwanese cheating case and the Hong Kong data-access case are only the most visible examples. Behind them lies a deeper problem — digital literacy programs that teach students how to use AI but not how to use it well.
Tencent, the Shenzhen-based tech giant, took a practical step during this year’s gaokao, the mainland’s National Higher Education Entrance Examination. It temporarily suspended certain artificial intelligence functions.
The company acknowledged that students might leverage advanced technology for their own advantage. It was a defensive move, a stopgap. It did not address the underlying issue.
The Hong Kong government has funded AI use in schools. Universities are promoting AI through new courses and training initiatives. These efforts focus on capacity building and skills development.
They are meant to enhance competitiveness. They are necessary.
They are not sufficient. What is missing is character education. Civic responsibility.
A clear sense that knowing how to use a tool is not the same as knowing when, or whether, to use it. The recent incidents suggest that students are learning the mechanics of AI without learning its boundaries.
They are being trained, but not formed. This is not a new problem. Technology has always outpaced the ethics around it.
But the speed of AI development has widened the gap. A student can now wear a pair of glasses that feeds them answers in real time. A doctor can query patient databases with a few keystrokes.
The temptation is immediate. The ethical reasoning needed to resist it must be built beforehand.
For those involved in education, the lesson is blunt. Encouraging effective use of advanced technology is important. But without ethical grounding, students will continue to misuse it.
The Taiwanese cheater and the Hong Kong graduate are not anomalies. They are warnings.
The question now is whether schools, universities, and governments will respond by embedding ethics into AI literacy programs from the start. Not as an afterthought. Not as a module tacked on at the end.
As a core priority. The funding and the courses are already in place. What remains to be built is the moral framework to guide them.
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