🌍 The UK’s super-safe, controversial internet

Good morning, Quartz readers!

Here’s what you need to know

The UK passed a big new internet safety law. Parliament enacted new rules for social media platforms like Meta and TikTok, but it’s not clear how some of the more draconian measures will be enforced, and critics say the package threatens privacy and free expression.

The Fed projects it will win its inflation fight by 2026. US central bank officials expect the rate of average annual inflation to come down to 2% by that year—it’s still estimating a soft landing, but has a lot to factor in.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation pledged $200 million for reproductive health. The NGO announced the donations to support access to contraceptives and healthcare during childbirth at the UN General Assembly meeting.

Alexa, are you more than a kitchen timer?

In our Quartz Obsession podcast episode, “Smart homes: Built to crash,” host Scott Nover calls his Amazon Echo just an expensive kitchen timer, and we expect many of our listeners nodded in recognition. But Amazon would like to change that.

At Amazon’s fall hardware event yesterday, outgoing division head Dave Limp announced a major language learning model that would change Alexa from just a doer of simple tasks, like turning a light on, playing a song, or, yes, setting a timer for 15 minutes, no, fifteen minutes. No, Alexa, not fifty minutes. FIFTEEN MINUTES. (“For how long?”)

Now, the voice assistant will be able to have more natural-feeling conversations, write love poems, tell stories based on prompts, and come up with ideas for date nights. As Diego Lasarte points out, it just remains to be seen whether anybody wants these things.

An old problem for a new tool

The purpose of Aether, an AI platform for asset managers, is to generate estimates of a stock’s performance over differing time horizons, and it does this for more than 25,000 companies.

But like all AI, Aether’s output is only as good as its data. In Aether’s case, that data comes from stock prices, volatility, exchange rates, and commodity prices. But it also uses sustainability metrics, which means it’s working with what parent company Arabesque’s CTO Nikolaos Kaplis terms more “exotic” metrics. For example, how companies calculate carbon emissions levels in their own, distinct ways, forcing Arabesque to redo calculations to standardize their data. “We have to be very careful,” he told Quartz

Aether isn’t the only tool using AI to help with investing strategy, and this category of products is attracting the attention of regulators. Michelle Cheng looks into the difficulty of creating a clean, green investment portfolio, even with AI.

It’s time to start worrying about wheat

Let’s look at some numbers about wheat:

20%: Share of calories wheat makes up in the average diet, globally, as an important dietary fiber

50%: How much wheat demand is expected to climb from today’s levels, by 2050

75°F (24°C): The high end of wheat’s optimal growing temperature

You see the problem here. As hotter temperatures and drought become the norm in places used to growing wheat, yields will be reduced. As with many of these issues, hope is not lost, but the wheat farming industry, like so many others, is one to watch as it adapts to a changing future.

Quartz’s most popular

🤝 How Turkey is using Starlink to win a Tesla factory

💸 Hedge funds are risking financial turmoil by shorting $600 billion in US Treasurys

🥕 Instacart goes public while slashing minimum pay rates for gig workers

📺 A little-known giant of local TV wants to buy ABC from Disney

📈 This game will show you just how foolish it is to sell stocks right now

🪮 Can TikTok conquer the American shopper?

Surprising discoveries

It’s Tree of the Year time. If you’ve never voted before, try and branch out.

McDonald’s is in hot water over burning people with coffee again. Before you scoff, know that these things aren’t usually the laughing matter they’re made out to be.

A Danish artist’s blank canvas art plan didn’t really work out. He had to return the money loaned to him by a museum for his “Take the Money and Run” pieces.

But Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s massive Parisian installation worked out really well. The materials used for wrapping up the Arc de Triomphe will all be reused for shade and other structures for upcoming events.

In the US, registered Republicans are 24% more likely to be organ donors than Democrats. The history, and future, of organ donation is retina-opening. Check it out in the latest Quartz Weekly Obsession. Want to get it in your inbox every week, for free? Sign up here. 

Our best wishes for a productive day. Send any news, comments, appropriately hot drinks with properly fastened lids, and even just regular old trees to talk@qz.com. Reader support makes Quartz available to all—become a member. Today’s Daily Brief was brought to you by Tim Fernholz and Susan Howson.