🤖 AI Just Raised $450M on a Wild Bet — And That's Not Even the Most Alarming Story Today

Today's episode of Daily Inference is packed with stories that reveal just how fast AI is reshaping everything around us. A two-year-old Cambridge startup called CuspAI just secured $450 million — backed by Jeff Bezos and a national government — to use AI in supercharging the hunt for rare materials critical to next-gen chip manufacturing. Meanwhile, Australia is cracking down on automated government decision-making while its universities spiral into crisis over AI cheating and what it means for the future of learning. New research from MIT reveals a deeply unsettling finding about AI hiring tools: they don't just reflect human bias, they can invent entirely new ones — with real consequences for real workers already facing AI-driven layoffs. On the philosophical frontier, Anthropic admits it can't rule out that Claude may be conscious, and the philosopher who coined 'the hard problem of consciousness' thinks we could see conscious AI within a decade. And in a strange but telling sign of the times, fake AI-generated bird photos are quietly corrupting the citizen science datasets researchers depend on. The throughline across every story today is the same: AI is moving fast, and the integrity of everything it touches is on the line.Subscribe to Daily Inference: dailyinference.comLove AI? Check out our other AI tools: 60sec.site and Artificial Intelligence Radio