The Looking Glass

[Henry's essay was victorious in the school's History Essay Prize 2021, in the Sixth Form Category] HENRY PEART The Stasi - perhaps the greatest and most efficient secret police agency ever to have existed - spied on and tormented nearly the entire population of the German Democratic Republic (GDR, also "East Germany") from 1950-1990, and successfully kept an incredibly unpopular government in power for 40 years. However, the days of the police state (in Western Europe at least) are over, and so the questions that arise are those of how we rehabilitate those who have had their lives destroyed by the Stasi, and how we rehabilitate those torturers and the complex web of informants that made the police state a reality. Perhaps more importantly, how should we judge the Stasi through our modern lens of constant criticism of the past, and is the current German state doing enough to make up for historical state-sponsored horrors? This essay will provide a brief overview of t...

NISHANTH RAJ DHINAKARAN We all know that technology has been rapidly progressing throughout this era, with brilliant and innovative designs dominating our world in nearly every aspect. However, a particular widely used sector in technology that continues to marvel us even to this day is Artificial Intelligence.  What many people don’t realise is that the integration of Artificial Intelligence is almost universal, from recommending shows on Netflix to your own personal Google Home/Alexa. But it won’t end there: this is just the beginning. Even if we’ve gone from simple AI programs that could beat you in a chess game to more intricate AI that can drive autonomous cars for you, we’ve still only just scratched the surface of what could be achieved with AI's power. In this article, I’m going to explain the basics of AI/Machine Learning, which I hope will captivate your interest if you plan on studying engineering or computer science in the future. Although historically Alan Turing’s “Ca...