In a moment when internet connections are everywhere and nearly all interactions can be monitored or recorded, what exactly constitutes “cheating”? (Not in the relationship sense; in the broader ethical one.) That’s a question a technologist and former Columbia University student named Chungin Lee recently reckoned with — and while the answer may have gotten him kicked out of his Ivy League school, it’s also resulted in him raising millions of dollars for Cluely, his new startup.
In a recent post on LinkedIn, Lee described Cluely as “a cheating tool for literally everything.” It works, he explained, by using “a completely undetectable AI that sees your screen, hears your audio, and gives you real-time assistance in any situation” — and goes on to list a few potential uses for it: “interviews, assignments, tests, sales calls, meetings — everything.”
His post was accompanied by a short commercial for the service in which a young man uses a combination of Cluely and smart glasses while on a first date. This is less creepy than it sounds, in part because the protagonist of the commercial does not win the heart of his date, and in fact makes several terrible decisions over the course of the night.
That said, Cluely’s manifesto makes some understandable points, such as comparing the service to calculators, while also taking things to an absurd extent. “Why memorize facts, write code, research anything — when a model can do it in seconds?” the manifesto declares. That’s raising epistemological questions that are above my proverbial pay grade, but I’m of the opinion that there’s nothing wrong with research tools to supplement one’s existing knowledge, but there generally needs to be knowledge there in the first place.
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There’s life beyond the infinite scroll. We put together a toolkit of habits, routines and products to help you live more intentionally.In an interview with Gothamist, Lee hints that he’s making bold statements intentionally. “It’s just meant to be provocative,” he said of his company’s “Invisible AI to Cheat on Everything” slogan. From there, he went on to speak of “[embracing] the discomfort” around AI. Whether that will be enough to get customers on board, though, is a question that awaits its answer.
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