Current Affairs - Technology

India’s first digital nomad village was launched in Yakten, located in the Pakyong district of Sikkim, on July 15, 2025. The initiative, named ‘Nomad Sikkim’, is a collaborative effort between the Pakyong district administration and the NGO Sarvahitey. It offers broadband-equipped homestays for remote workers, enabling a blend of modern work life with traditional rural living. The village is equipped with strong internet connectivity, reliable power backups, and cultural experiences like local cuisine and folk performances. This model addresses seasonal income gaps for homestay owners and aims to inspire similar developments in other rural parts of India.

WOOHOO, an innovative restaurant set to debut in central Dubai near the iconic Burj Khalifa, features an AI chef named Chef Aiman. Chef Aiman is a culinary large language model (LLM) designed to create menus and craft the restaurant's ambience using advanced knowledge in food science, molecular gastronomy, and international cuisines. While human staff handle the food assembly, the concept merges cutting-edge technology with gastronomy, positioning Dubai at the forefront of AI innovation in the food industry. The project is spearheaded by Ahmet Oytun Cakir, CEO of Gastronaut, signalling a shift toward AI-driven culinary experiences.

HCLSoftware, the software division of HCLTech, launched Domino 14.5 with Domino IQ, a sovereign AI platform focused on ensuring data sovereignty and privacy for governments and regulated sectors. This platform is specifically designed to prevent foreign surveillance by keeping sensitive data within national boundaries. As nations increasingly update their data protection laws, tools like Domino IQ become vital for secure and autonomous digital governance. The launch also complements HCLTech’s broader strategy of promoting AI adoption through sovereign and global frameworks, including its collaboration with OpenAI, to meet various enterprise-level data and security demands.

The Phenome India ‘National Biobank’ is located at the CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB) in New Delhi. Inaugurated by Dr. Jitendra Singh, the Union Minister of State for Science and Technology, the biobank is a significant step in biomedical research and data collection in India. It aims to gather genomic, lifestyle, and clinical data from participants, contributing to advancements in personalised medicine and public health. The Ministry of Science and Technology supports this initiative, making New Delhi a central hub for this national-scale scientific effort to improve healthcare outcomes through integrative biological research.

A web crawler is an automated bot that systematically browses the internet to collect data for training AI models (like OpenAI's GPTBot) or powering real-time information retrieval in AI assistants. These crawlers operate without universal consent frameworks, raising copyright concerns as they ingest news articles, blogs and educational content. Unlike general search engine crawlers, AI-specific variants focus on harvesting training datasets for Large Language Models, creating ethical dilemmas around unlicensed content usage. India currently lacks regulations to govern such data scraping, highlighting the need for consent-based digital ecosystems and technical safeguards for content creators.