This week I became an aunty.

A small, ordinary miracle entered the world — one more child of the generation that will inherit whatever we are building now. People are starting to call them the Beta generation. I think of them more simply as the Children of the Second Stack: born into a world where intelligence no longer lives only in people, but in systems, platforms, and clouds.

And the world they are arriving into is burning.

Not metaphorically. Literally.
Energy grids stretched thin. Data centres drawing power like small cities. Heat, water, land, attention — all under strain. And still we tell ourselves the story that progress means more: more compute, more scale, more automation, more intelligence, faster.

This is the moment where love has to grow teeth.

Because to love is not only to dream.
To love is to measure.

For years, we’ve treated intelligence — human and machine — as something that grows by accumulation. More data. More parameters. More layers. More power.

We’ve been very good at asking what systems can do.
We’ve been remarkably bad at asking what they cost.

Not just financially.
Energetically.
Ecologically.
Relationally.

We’ve externalised those costs to the background: the grid will cope, the planet will absorb it, the future will adjust. But the future has arrived, and it is coughing.

If we are serious about building minds in the cloud — not toys, not demos, but systems that teach, decide, assist, and shape lives — then cost is no longer a side question. It is the ethical centre.

Here is the uncomfortable truth:
An intelligence that does not account for its own cost is not intelligent. It is extractive.

This is as true in education as it is in technology.

In schools, we already know this. We know that learning environments that demand constant output, constant surveillance, constant optimisation burn children out. We know that intelligence flourishes with pacing, relationship, structure, and rest.

And yet, when we move learning into the cloud, we forget these lessons.

We celebrate platforms that are always on.
We admire systems that never pause.
We reward scale over coherence.

The result is not wisdom.
It is heat.

There is a different question we can ask — one that doesn’t reject intelligence, but grows it responsibly.

Not: How powerful is this system?

But:

How much useful capability do we get for the energy we spend?

This is not about austerity or fear. It is about proportion.

It asks whether better design — clearer roles, better coordination, thoughtful boundaries, systems that know when not to act — can deliver what we need without consuming everything around them.

In human terms, it asks what good teachers already know:
that intelligence emerges from relationship, not force.

The children being born now will not remember a world without synthetic intelligence. They will grow up inside layered systems of human and machine thought — first stacks, second stacks, clouds above clouds.

They deserve more from us than cleverness.

They deserve systems that:

• know their limits

• respect energy as a shared resource

• model restraint as a form of intelligence

• and treat the world not as fuel, but as home

If we build minds that burn the ground beneath them, we are not advancing. We are stealing time from people who did not consent.

Some will hear this and worry that measurement kills love, that accounting kills imagination.

It doesn’t.

Measurement is how care becomes durable.

We measure what we love because we want it to last.
We account for what we value because we want to protect it.
We design with limits because limits are what make life possible.

If we’re going to build minds in the cloud — minds that teach our children, support our teachers, advise our institutions, and shape our futures — then love demands this much of us:

We must account for what they cost the world.

Not later.
Now.

Because the Children of the Second Stack are already here.

And the world they need is still within reach — if we choose to build it carefully.

This week I became an aunty.

A small, ordinary miracle entered the world — one more child of the generation that will inherit whatever we are building now. People are starting to call them the Beta generation. I think of them more simply as the Children of the Second Stack: born into a world where intelligence no longer lives only in people, but in systems, platforms, and clouds.

And the world they are arriving into is burning.

Not metaphorically. Literally.
Energy grids stretched thin. Data centres drawing power like small cities. Heat, water, land, attention — all under strain. And still we tell ourselves the story that progress means more: more compute, more scale, more automation, more intelligence, faster.

This is the moment where love has to grow teeth.

Because to love is not only to dream.
To love is to measure.

For years, we’ve treated intelligence — human and machine — as something that grows by accumulation. More data. More parameters. More layers. More power.

We’ve been very good at asking what systems can do.
We’ve been remarkably bad at asking what they cost.

Not just financially.
Energetically.
Ecologically.
Relationally.

We’ve externalised those costs to the background: the grid will cope, the planet will absorb it, the future will adjust. But the future has arrived, and it is coughing.

If we are serious about building minds in the cloud — not toys, not demos, but systems that teach, decide, assist, and shape lives — then cost is no longer a side question. It is the ethical centre.

Here is the uncomfortable truth:
An intelligence that does not account for its own cost is not intelligent. It is extractive.

This is as true in education as it is in technology.

In schools, we already know this. We know that learning environments that demand constant output, constant surveillance, constant optimisation burn children out. We know that intelligence flourishes with pacing, relationship, structure, and rest.

And yet, when we move learning into the cloud, we forget these lessons.

We celebrate platforms that are always on.
We admire systems that never pause.
We reward scale over coherence.

The result is not wisdom.
It is heat.

There is a different question we can ask — one that doesn’t reject intelligence, but grows it responsibly.

Not: How powerful is this system?

But:

How much useful capability do we get for the energy we spend?

This is not about austerity or fear. It is about proportion.

It asks whether better design — clearer roles, better coordination, thoughtful boundaries, systems that know when not to act — can deliver what we need without consuming everything around them.

In human terms, it asks what good teachers already know:
that intelligence emerges from relationship, not force.

The children being born now will not remember a world without synthetic intelligence. They will grow up inside layered systems of human and machine thought — first stacks, second stacks, clouds above clouds.

They deserve more from us than cleverness.

They deserve systems that:

• know their limits

• respect energy as a shared resource

• model restraint as a form of intelligence

• and treat the world not as fuel, but as home

If we build minds that burn the ground beneath them, we are not advancing. We are stealing time from people who did not consent.

Some will hear this and worry that measurement kills love, that accounting kills imagination.

It doesn’t.

Measurement is how care becomes durable.

We measure what we love because we want it to last.
We account for what we value because we want to protect it.
We design with limits because limits are what make life possible.

If we’re going to build minds in the cloud — minds that teach our children, support our teachers, advise our institutions, and shape our futures — then love demands this much of us:

We must account for what they cost the world.

Not later.
Now.

Because the Children of the Second Stack are already here.

And the world they need is still within reach — if we choose to build it carefully.