agsandrew - stock.adobe.com News UKRI must do more to drive innovation agenda and avoid fraud The UKR’s funding of research and innovation to support the government’s growth strategy has room for improvement. By Cliff Saran, Managing Editor Published: 14 May 2025 0:01 The UKRI, the largest single public funder of research and innovation in the UK, needs funding assurance. The UK research and innovation: Providing support through grants report by the National Audit Committee (NAO) found that the organisation’s ongoing challenges include a lack of joined-up direction from government departments; inefficient data systems; and the need to consider how to further support well-managed risk-taking through organisational culture. The report found a lack of coordination in how the government expects UKRI to support the delivery of a range of objectives. The UKRI uses its budget to support the government’s research and innovation agenda. Given the multi-year nature of UKRI’s investments, it needs to make a high level of financial commitments into future financial years, which, the NAO said, limits the budget available to respond to emerging government priorities through initiating new programmes.  Due to the broad nature of UKRI’s activity, government departments indicate their policy priorities to UKRI through a variety of means, including ad hoc and routine meetings, government strategies and mission statements, and spending review budgets. However, the NAO reported that these are not consolidated or ranked. The report’s authors found that since its establishment, UKRI has been grappling with consolidating the data of its predecessor organisations, which ran separate systems and had data quality issues. Although it has now developed a system to classify grants by theme algorithmically, based on the award title and description, tracking or analysing other aspects of spending across UKRI remains a difficult manual exercise. The NAO was told by UKRI that around 15% of its grants do not have a full description on its system or the descriptions are poor quality, which means that spending on these grants cannot be accurately automatically classified. There are also issues relating to fraud. The NAO reported that the counter-fraud team at the UKRI is under-staffed, which means there is a backlog of cases and limited capacity for preventative work. The report from the NAO found that in 2023-24, UKRI investigated suspected fraud on £42.6m of grants. It identified £4.6m of fraud; prevented £13.5m and recovered £80,000. The NAO noted that UKRI has recognised there are issues with its approach to fraud, and said it was reorganising its risk, assurance, counter-fraud and corporate governance team. According to the NAO report, the UKRI is working on a new counter-fraud strategy and a new approach to funding assurance; has recruited new staff; and begun efforts to improve team culture and update fraud risk assessments. The NAO was told to expect improvements by September 2025. Read more stories about UKRI Government funding to help businesses discover AI value: The government is betting the bank on the power of artificial intelligence to fix the public sector, mend roads and boost the UK economy. Government boosts Horizon R&D campaign: As part of its Plan for Change, Labour is ramping up efforts to get more UK businesses to apply for Horizon funding. The authors of the report concluded that UKRI, which spends around £9bn annually, needs to establish a strong approach to understand how its work is providing a return on investment for taxpayers. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, chair of the Public Accounts Committee, said: “UKRI plays a key role in supporting a substantial and successful R&I system, seeking to take a high risk, high reward approach to grant funding. However, it lacks any measurable objectives to track progress and does not have the right data to manage grant spending strategically. “For the nation to remain global leaders in R&I, UKRI must do more to support its decision-makers, foster resilience and ensure our systems can continue to respond to emerging challenges.” In The Current Issue: UK MoJ crime prediction algorithms raise serious concerns Interview: Markus Schümmelfeder, CIO, Boehringer Ingelheim Download Current Issue NordVPN goes full GUI on Linux – Open Source Insider The ongoing AI-automation convergence, and what this means for the enterprise – Data Matters View All Blogs

Elon Musk's AI chatbot, Grok, thinks that The Atlantic and The BBC are credible, reputable sources for news and information. Which is funny, because Musk — who's engaged in a years-long project to erode trust in legacy media organizations and even specific journalists — doesn't. And now, he's furious at his own AI chatbot.The Musk-Grok tiff happened over the weekend, when a misinformation-spreading X-formerly-Twitter user @amuse posted an "article" about billionaire bogeymen (like George and Alex Soros, Bill Gates, and the philanthropic Ford Foundation) using deep pockets to "hijack federal grants" by "seeding" nongovernmental organizations with left-wing ideology.As opposed to a thoughtful or reported analysis of how cash from wealthy donors has transformed American politics, the article was a deeply partisan, conspiracy-riddled account smattered with scary-sounding buzzwords, "DEI" ranting, and no foundational evidence to back its conspiratorial claims (with little mention of high-powered and heavily funded conservative non-profit groups, either).It seems that Grok, the chatbot created and operated by the Musk-owned AI company xAI, had some issues with the @amuse post, too.When an X user asked Grok to analyze the post, the AI rejected its core premise, arguing that there's "no evidence" that Soros, Gates, and the Ford Foundation "hijack federal grants or engage in illegal influence peddling." In other words, it said that the world as described in the @amuse post doesn't exist.The user — amid accusations that Grok has been trained on "woke" data — then asked Grok to explain what "verified" sources it pulled from to come to that conclusion. Grok explained that it used "foundation websites and reputable news outlets," naming The Atlantic and the BBC, which it said are "credible" and "backed by independent audits and editorial standards." It also mentioned denials from Soros-led foundations."No evidence shows the Gates, Soros, or Ford Foundations hijacking grants; they operate legally with private funds," said Grok. "However, their support for progressive causes raises transparency concerns, fueling debate. Critics question their influence, while supporters highlight societal benefits. Verification comes from audits and public records, but skepticism persists in polarized discussions."This response, apparently, ticked off Musk."This is embarrassing," the world's richest man responded to his own chatbot. Which, at this rate, might prove to be his Frankenstein.It's unclear whether Musk was specifically mad about the characterization of news outlets or claims by Soros-founded organizations as reliable, but we'd go out on a limb to venture the answer is both.By no means should the world be handing their media literacy over to quick reads by Grok, or any other chatbot. Chatbots get things wrong — they even make up sources — and users need to employ their own discretion, judgment, and reasoning skills while engaging with them. (Interestingly, @amuse stepped in at one point to claim that Grok had given him a figure to use that the chatbot said was inaccurate in a later post.)But this interaction does highlight the increasing politicization of chatbots, a debate at which Grok has been very much at the center. While there's a ton of excellent, measured journalism out there, we're existing in a deeply partisan attention and information climate in which people can — and very much do — seek out information that fuels and supports their personal biases.In today's information landscape, conclusion-shopping is easy — and when chatbots fail to scratch that itch, people get upset. Including, it seems, the richest man on Earth, who's been DIY-ing his preferred reality for a while now.Share This Article

“Wherever I go, the wind follows. And the wind smells like rain.” If those words came from the mouth of Humphrey Bogart or Edward G. Robinson in a crime flick from the 1930s or ’40s, they would sound like the cry of a tortured soul, living in the dregs of society. But because they come from the mouth of Nicolas Cage in the movie Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, they sound like melodramatic jokes, just as silly as anything said by the Looney Tunes-esque Spider-Ham, voiced by John Mulaney. And Cage is now reprising his role as Spider-Man Noir for the upcoming series Spider-Noir. But as the show’s first teaser reveals, the live-action Amazon MGM series has done away with the goofy tone of the movie that preceded it. Presented in black and white, the show is all moody visuals and implications of violence, in which a morally conflicted Spider-Man, still in his fedora and trench coat, does battle with the 1930s criminal underworld. As surprising as this shift may be to those who love the Spider-Verse movies, Spider-Noir is drawing its inspiration from the comics, and that’s a good thing. Marvel’s Great Depression The first issue of the 2008-2009 miniseries Spider-Man: Noir, written by David Hine and Fabrice Sapolsky and illustrated by Carmine Di Giandomenico, sees the police busting into the offices of Daily Bugle editor J. Jonah Jameson, only to find Spider-Man standing over him. Images such as this are well-known to fans of the wallcrawler, but this one is different. It’s not just that this scene takes place in 1933, nearly 30 full years before Spider-Man makes his first appearance in Amazing Fantasy #15. It’s also that Jameson has been shot to death and Spider-Man, dressed in a black trench coat (no fedora here), is holding the gun. Of course Spidey didn’t do it, and the series follows his investigation into Jameson’s murder. But the very shock of the image does underscore the tone of Spider-Man: Noir. Gone is the quippy Spidey, with his relationship problems and lovable hard-luck. In its place is a Spidey who dwells on the edges of society. He’s still Peter Parker, but he now lives among the downtrodden who lost everything in the Great Depression, listening to the socialist speeches delivered by his Aunt May, reimagined here as an Emma Goldman-type figure. Surprising as that description sounds, it follows the original appeal of Marvel Comics, described by Stan Lee as taking place in “the world outside your window.” 1933 was a period of great social change, with the excesses of the Roaring ’20s still enjoyed by some while others were consumed by the ravages of the stock market crash. Hitler has just become the German Chancellor, but a mistrust of the institutions that had failed them and a general nativism and xenophobia kept most Americans from seeing yet another world war on the horizon. Instead most Americans turned their attention to more immediate enemies, which include the upper classes who wanted to cling to Gilded Age power (and the institutions who supported them), as well as immigrants who continue to make their way to the U.S. All of those tensions inform Spider-Man: Noir, making for a more morally complex story than one would expect. The teenage Peter Parker is still the pure-hearted kid we know and love, but the general cynicism of the world gives him no clear moral standing as he fights Norman Osborn, aka the Goblin, and his thugs. Seriously Dark The Spider-Man Noir of Into the Spider-Verse played more like a parody of a film noir, which literally translates to “black film,” as coined by French critics analyzing moody American crime pictures of the 1940s and ’50s made in the wake of this era. In those films, the hero was a a hardboiled cynic, a la the detectives in The Big Heat or The Maltese Falcon. But in Spider-Verse, he’s a buffoon to be laughed at for his melodrama and inability to understand color. It’s a good joke, but not the sort of thing that can sustain an entire television series. So it’s a good thing that Spider-Noir seems to be taking its cues from the comics instead of the movie. Granted, though, that some things need to be changed. Even if Spidey remains masked, Cage sounds every bit like the 61-year-old he is, and no amount of digital de-aging will make him into the young teen from the comics. Thus he can’t quite be the same innocent he was in the comics, nor can he have a firebrand Aunt May. She and Ben would be long gone by the time sexagenarian Spidey is working. However, she could still have been a leftist, perhaps a union organizer or suffragist. More than a matter of political preference, though, the depiction of Spider-Noir’s Aunt May matters because the series cannot be a bunch of winking nods at movies and literature of the ’30s and ’40s. That worked for maybe 10 minutes of screen time in Spider-Verse, but it won’t hold a series—in part because modern audiences don’t know enough about film noir to get the reference. Instead it needs to be a story grounded in a type of reality, especially because it has a fantasy character at the center. Spider-Man: Noir and its sequel miniseries The Eye of the Beholder are a great model for the show and, if this first teaser is any indication, the model that Spider-Noir intends to follow. Spider-Noir will stream on MGM+ in 2026.

The International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia,  has returned, with its grand opening held in early May. The exhibition runs until November 23, 2025 The Canada Council for the Arts, Commissioner of Canada’s official participation in the International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, administers the selection process and oversees the exhibition at the Canada Pavilion. But in addition to the Canada Pavilion, Canadian architects and designers have a presence in several other exhibitions that are part of this year’s festival. Here’s a round-up of the Canadian work in Venice. Picoplanktonics. Photo credit: Valentina Mori Picoplanktonics led by Living Room Collective Canada’s official entry to the Biennale is Picoplanktonics, a 3D-printed living artwork incorporating cyanobacteria—a global first at the intersection of architecture, biotechnology, and art. The exhibition, developed by the Living Room Collective, showcases the potential for collaboration between humans and nature. Picoplanktonics is an exploration of the potential to co-operate with living systems by co-constructing spaces that “remediate the planet rather than exploit it.” The installation transforms the Canada Pavilion into an aquatic micro-ecosystem, where architectural structures grow, evolve, and naturally degrade alongside their living components. It was designed according to regenerative architecture principles, and is not only a built object, but also a breathing organism interacting with its environment, which prompts reflection on potential futures of the built environment. The creative team is led by bio-designer Andrea Shin Ling, alongside core team members Nicholas Hoban, Vincent Hui and Clayton Lee. Etude Ile Verte by Atelier Pierre Thibault. Photo credit Alex Lesage Les boucaneries de l’île Verte by Atelier Pierre Thibault Atelier Pierre Thibault has been invited to participate in this year’s Venice Biennale as the only team from Québec. His project is inspired by the old fish smokehouses, or boucaneries, of Île Verte. With the support of the fifty permanent residents of Île Verte, Atelier Pierre Thibault has designed a participatory architectural project that aims to reinterpret the boucaneries as creative canvases to imagine new uses to strengthen Île Verte’s autonomy. This includes community greenhouses, artist studios, and gathering places. The exhibition aims to highlight, as Thibault puts it, “the strength of a sensitive and collective gesture in response to the erosion of traditional buildings and the major climate challenges faced by inhabitants living year-round in an isolated island environment.” The construction of the installations, along with the exchanges sparked with the community, was documented through photography and video, and captures both the process and the spirit of collaboration that defined the project. Celebrating the Verdoyants’ collective intelligence and inviting reflection on the future of the boucaneries, this participatory project highlights the exemplary and internationally resonant nature of this approach. The Atelier Pierre Thibault project will be on view at the Corderie dell’Arsenale. The pavilion itself will take the form of a temporary, lightweight structure constructed from reused materials, situated on the grounds of the French Pavilion, which is currently undergoing renovation. The curators have selected 50 projects to be featured across six thematic sections: Living With the Existing, the Immediate, the Broken, Vulnerabilities, Nature, and Combined Intelligences. Image courtesy of WZMH Architects Speedstac by WZMH Architects as part of Living With…Combined Intelligences  As part of the exhibition “Living With… Combined Intelligences,” WZMH Architects presents Speedstac, a prefabricated modular precast solution that aims to reimagine how urban areas devastated by war can be rebuilt. Originally designed to accelerate housing construction in Canada, Speedstac took on urgent new relevance following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. With more than 170,000 buildings damaged or destroyed and millions displaced, WZMH’s innovation, developed through its R&D lab, sparkbird, aims to offer a scalable solution: self-contained, plug-and-play building modules with integrated electrical and plumbing systems that can be seamlessly inserted into existing structures. The use of modern materials such as high-performance concrete can reduce the weight of the modules, making them easier to lift and move using conventional crane equipment. Using a robust locking mechanism, several modules can be securely fastened and unfastened as needed, to produce an adaptive modular housing solution. The Speedstac system aims to offer a solution to the challenges of traditional construction methods, enabling faster, more flexible, and more sustainable building projects. The Vivre Avec / Living With exhibition is hosted in the French Pavilion. Presentation, Northern Horizons. Photo credit: Blouin Orzes architectes Northern Horizons by Blouin Orzes architectes as part of Time Space Existence  Through a wide selection of projects—ranging from conceptual works, models and photographs to videos, sculptures and site-specific installations—the exhibition Time Space Existence, hosted by the European Cultural Centre, aims to provoke participants to question their relationship with space and time, re-envisioning new ways of living and rethinking architecture through a larger lens. Quebec firm Blouin Orzes’ participation revolves around their first-hand understanding of Inuit territories, where they have been working since 2000. Their contribution is based on their  recent publication, Northern Journeys. Blouin Orzes’ contribution in on display at the Palazzo Mora, and additional contributions to Time Space Existence are on view at the Palazzo Bembo and Marinaressa Gardens. View of Commercial and Residential Towers from Seymour and West Georgia Streets. Image credit: Henriquez Partners Studio BC Glass Sea Sponge Another contribution to Time Space Existence is the work of Henriquez Partners Studio. The transformative mixed-use development which they are presenting merges architectural innovation, social responsibility and urban revitalization, and has recently been submitted to the City of Vancouver. The project is about ambitious city-building, and aims to unlock public benefits on currently underutilized land in a way that supports some of the city’s most urgent needs, while contributing bold architecture to the city skyline. Four towers, designed by Henriquez, draw inspiration from rare and ancient glass sea sponge reefs, whose ecological strength and resilience have shaped both form and structure. These living marine organisms, which are unique to the Pacific Northwest, aim to serve as a metaphor for regeneration and adaptation. This concept is translated through the architectural language of the towers: silhouettes, sculptural forms, and sustainable performance. The tallest tower, a stand-alone hotel, proposed at 1,033 feet, is shaped by a structural diagrid exoskeleton that allows for column-free interiors while maximizing strength and minimizing material use. Developed in collaboration with Arup, the structural system references the skeletal lattice of sea sponges; a concept researched at Harvard for its groundbreaking structural efficiency. Henriquez Partners’  contribution is on display at Palazzo Bembo. Renewal Development Shishalh Project Duplex Renderings – Image credit: Renewal Development Shíshálh Nation: Ten Home Rescue Project as part of theLiving With / Vivre avec exhibition Vancouver-based company Renewal Development has been selected to appear as part of the French Pavilion’s exhibition on housing innovation. In 2024, Renewal Development partnered with developer Wesgroup and the shíshálh Nation to relocate ten high value Port Moody homes set for demolition to the shíshálh Nation on the Sunshine Coast. The Nation has been experiencing an acute housing shortage with 900 Nation members currently on a waitlist for housing. Renewal Development says that this initiative reflects its “deeply held values of sustainability, and reconciliation” and its “work to offer real-world solutions to waste and housing shortages by reimagining what already exists.” The project will be on display in the French Pavilion. The following is a list of other Canadian groups and individuals contributing to this year’s Venice Biennale: On Storage Brendan Cormier is a Canadian writer, curator, and urban designer based in London. He is currently the lead curator of 20th and 21st Century Design for the Shekou Partnership at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Prior to this he served as the managing editor of Volume Magazine. La Biennale di Venezia and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London present for the ninth consecutive year the Applied Arts Pavilion Special Project titled On Storage, curated by Brendan Cormier, in collaboration with Diller, Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R). It explores the global architecture of storage in service of the circulation of things, and features a newly commissioned six-channel film directed by DS+R. From Liquid to Stone: A Reconfigurable Concrete Tectonic Against Obsolescence Inge Donovan, based in Boston, achieved her Bachelor of Arts in Architectural Design and Architectural History, Theory and Criticism from the Daniels Faculty of Architecture at the University of Toronto in 2019 after growing up in Nova Scotia, Canada. The Curse of Dimensionality Adeline Chum is currently a Graduate Research Assistant at the Center for Spatial Research and third-year student in the MArch Program at GSAPP. She has received her Bachelor of Architectural Studies from the University of Waterloo, Canada and has worked in small and medium-sized architecture firms in Toronto, New York, and London. Oceanic Refractions Elise Misao Hunchuck, born in Toronto and currently based Berlin and Milan, is a transdisciplinary researcher, editor, writer, and educator. Her practice brings together architecture, landscape architecture, and media studies to research sites in Canada, Japan, China, and Ukraine, employing text, images, and cartographies to document, explore, and archive the co-constitutive relationships between plants, animals, and minerals—in all of their forms. SpaceSuits.Us: A Case for Ultra Thin Adjustments Charles Kim is a designer currently based in Boston. Stemming from his background in architecture, he is interested in materials, DIY, and the aesthetics of affordability. Since graduating from Harvard Graduate School of Design in 2022, he has been working as an architectural designer at Utile. Uncommon Knowledge: Plants as Sensors Sonia Sobrino Ralston is a designer, researcher, and educator, and is currently an Assistant Teaching Professor in Landscape Architecture and Art + Design at Northeastern University in the College of Arts, Media, and Design. She is interested in the intersections between landscape, architecture, and the history of technology. Doxiadis’ Informational Modernism Mark Wasiuta is Senior Lecturer in Architecture at Columbia GSAPP and Co-Director of the Critical, Curatorial and Conceptual Practices in Architecture program. Wasiuta is recipient of recent grants from the Onassis Foundation, the Asian Cultural Council, NYSCA, and the Graham Foundation, where he was an inaugural Graham Foundation Fellow. Blue Garden: The Architecture of Emergence Tanvi Khurmi, based in London, UK, is a multidisciplinary designer and artist. Her practice is focused on addressing and combatting issues surrounding the climate crisis. After receiving a Bachelor’s in Architecture with a minor in Environmental Studies from the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture at the University of Toronto, she earned a Masters of Architecture in Bio-Integrated Design at the Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London. Design as an Astronaut Dr. Cody Paige is the Director of the Space Exploration Initiative at the MIT Media Lab, a team of 50+ students, faculty, and staff building and flying advanced technology for space exploration. The Initiative focuses on helping students take their research into space. The pipeline developed to achieve this works with students from across the Media Lab and the MIT community to prototype space-related research in the lab, fly and test them in microgravity on parabolic and suborbital flights, and finally to take them to the International Space Station or on to the Moon. Cody also has a background in geology, specifically quaternary geochronology, and completed her Master of Applied Science at the University of Toronto in Aerospace Engineering and her Bachelor of Applied Science from Queen’s University in Engineering Physics.   The post Round-up: Canadian-led exhibitions at the 2025 Venice Biennale appeared first on Canadian Architect.