Chinese researcher He Jiankui’s use of CRISPR-Cas9 technology to edit a human embryo has sparked international condemnation. The editing, aimed at disabling a gene to increase resistance to diseases like AIDS, raises ethical concerns, risks unforeseen consequences, and highlights the need for a formal global treaty on gene editing.

Ayushman Bharat, the world’s largest public health insurance program, aims to cover 500 million people in India. Its success depends on using technology to scale health services, monitor treatment, and ensure accountability. Despite challenges in digitizing healthcare, India has the opportunity to create a unified framework for medical data exchange, prioritizing patient rights, privacy, and cross-platform accessibility.

The information revolution has disrupted traditional media gatekeeping, leading to the unchecked spread of misinformation. The rise of deep fake technology, creating indistinguishable false content, exacerbates this issue. Governments are struggling to regulate, and potential solutions like immutable life logs raise privacy concerns.

Despite its initial promise, AI solutions often fall short in the Indian legal context due to training on non-local data. A hybrid human-AI approach could build more responsive and effective systems.

Population bottlenecks increase susceptibility to genetic diseases like Tay-Sachs. To mitigate this, initiatives like Dor Yeshorem screen for recessive genes in high-risk communities. Similar genetic risks exist in India’s endogamous groups, indicating a need for widespread genetic analysis to improve medical outcomes and potentially integrate genetic compatibility into marriage decisions.

In the aftermath of the Supreme Court judgment the use of offline QR-based verification will prove to be a viable alternative that will allow us to continue to benefit from the Aadhaar identity system without exposing Aadhaar number holders to the many harms that the SC judgment was at pains to avoid.

The 2018 drone policy imposes registration and tech requirements on all but the smallest drones and requires all drones to incorporate NPNT technology that will allow for automated flight approvals through the digital sky platform.

The modern internet has become centralized and controlled by a few powerful corporations, deviating from its original vision of an open and decentralized platform. Tim Berners-Lee, the founding father of the internet, is working on a project called Solid to restore power to users by allowing them to store personal information in personal data stores (PDS) under their control. That said, universally accepted standards for electronic consent and true social graph portability might be a more effective way to balance convenience and data protection.

The recent Supreme Court judgment on Aadhaar has left confusion and dissatisfaction among various stakeholders. While the court upheld the identity scheme, it restricted its scope, leading to uncertainty over the role of the private sector in Aadhaar’s infrastructure. The judgment’s implications on government services and subsidies, many of which rely on private sector authentication, remain unclear, raising concerns about potential negative impacts on pensioners, migrant workers, and microfinance beneficiaries.

The phenomenon of Mount Pinatubo’s eruption reducing global temperatures has led scientists to consider geoengineering as a solution to global warming. However, past attempts at weather control, such as Project Cirrus in the 1940s, have had unintended and devastating effects, raising concerns about the unpredictability and potential dangers of implementing such large-scale interventions.