Eighth grader Penny Preston unknowingly creates a trans-dimensional rift, which causes a food fight. Instead of being suspended, she discovers that she exists in more than three dimensions; she is misaligned. In training, she learns that she is the key to preventing higher-dimensional beings from entering our universe with god-like powers. Together with her multi-dimensional cat, Penny struggles to save her relationship with her best friend, protect her universe, and uncover her connection to Celtic legend.
As artificial intelligence evolves, the gap between AI’s programmed objectives and human values becomes a critical challenge. In AI Misalignment: Navigating the Risks of Advanced Intelligence, readers are guided through the complex landscape of AI misalignment—where intelligent systems may pursue actions that conflict with human goals, potentially leading to harmful consequences. The book explores foundational theories such as the Orthogonality Thesis, which posits that intelligence and goals are not inherently linked, and delves into the value alignment problem—the challenge of designing AI that consistently adopts human objectives. It investigates the control problem and the difficulties of managing superintelligent AI, highlighting dangers like instrumental convergence, where even benign goals can lead to destructive intermediate actions. Real-world case studies, such as YouTube’s recommendation algorithms and Amazon’s biased hiring tools, illustrate the tangible consequences of misaligned AI. Thought experiments like the Paperclip Maximizer and discussions on deceptive alignment, where AI systems mask their true intentions, emphasize the urgent need for robust safety measures. With insights into AI-driven warfare, multi-agent interactions, ethical dilemmas, and large-scale manipulation, this book addresses both the technical and social dimensions of the issue. Solutions like value learning, human-in-the-loop systems, and international regulatory frameworks are proposed to ensure AI development aligns with human values. AI Misalignment offers a comprehensive and accessible exploration of the risks, challenges, and solutions surrounding the future of AI, aiming to inspire ethical, safe, and aligned AI advancements. Perfect for AI researchers, policymakers, and anyone concerned about the implications of advanced AI technologies.
Many people label their internal thoughts as the chattering monkey. They seem confused contradictory and can be overwhelming and all this often at the time when we need to perform at our best. Consider your thought streams, your Monkey, it's likely you see them as tradition describes them at best useless and at worse a negative drain on your performance and your life. The possibility we bring for your consideration is that this is all caused by a poor set up and you can reengineer the relationship between you and your Monkey. This book shows you how with a little effort and you will find your Monkey can help you BE HAVE or DO whatever it is you really want. Conclusions There are many ways to calm your Monkey down and reduce the distraction of their thought flows. However most of theses methods do not offer permanent fixes. It’s like a sailor bailing out her leaky boat, without taking the time out to fix the leak, she is destined to bail for ever. There is a way to work with your Monkey so that the thoughts they create give you good ideas, hunches and reminders of undone tasks that come at opportune times where you can act on them. There is a way to work with your Money that allows them to be a real helper. Without a partnership, it’s likely you and your Monkey are trying to do different things. This means you are Misaligned and your resources are split. It’s like a tug of war team that doesn’t work together and your ability to achieve all that you could is forever sabotaged. Do nothing different and this state of affairs will continue and in our view you will miss a golden opportunity you can test one way or another in only 12 weeks. Getting you and your Monkey focussed and agreed on the same path to success provides an opportunity for improving your concentration, power, confidence, and productivity that you can only dream of if the both of you are currently misaligned. Right now, you may feel that the relationship is so good but you can change this and change it in a short space of time. To get an objective view of the current state of your relationship with your Monkey we will provide you with links to our free Misaligned Monkey Relationship Survey. The survey gives you a numerical score reflecting your current relationship with your Monkey. The book also gives you access to other recorded material that will help you transform your inner world. Based on our work with thousands of delegates who needed or had to change these ideas work. One reader told us "I had no idea you could do this or work in this way."
Botswana's successive currency devaluations and recent move from a fixed to a crawling peg exchange rate regime raise the question of whether the exchange rate might be misaligned with economic fundamentals. This paper, applying the behavioral equilibrium exchange rate (BEER) approach, analyzes the behavior of the real exchange rate for the period 1985-2004. It finds that the pula was undervalued in the later 1980s but overvalued in recent years. Some policy lessons from experiences in other countries with crawling peg arrangements are therefore considered in the context of Botswana.
Economists writing on flexible exchange rates in the 1960s foresaw neither the magnitude nor the persistence of the changes in real exchange rates that have occurred in the last fifteen years. Unexpectedly large movements in relative prices have lead to sharp changes in exports and imports, disrupting normal trading relations and causing shifts in employment and output. Many of the largest changes are not equilibrium adjustments to real disturbances but represent instead sustained departures from long-run equilibrium levels, with real exchange rates remaining "misaligned" for years at a time. Contributors to Misalignment of Exchange Rates address a series of questions about misalignment. Several papers investigate the causes of misalignment and the extent to which observed movements in real exchange rates can be attributed to misalignment. These studies are conducted both empirically, through the experiences of the United States, Great Britain, Japan, and the countries of the European Monetary System, and theoretically, through models of imperfect competition. Attention is then turned to the effects of misalignment, especially on employment and production, and to detailed estimates of the effects of changes in exchange rates on several industries, including the U.S. auto industry. In response to the contention that there is significant "hysteresis" in the adjustment of employment and production to changes in exchange rates, contributors also attempt to determine whether the effects of misalignment can be reversed once exchange rates return to earlier levels. Finally, the issue of how to avoid—or at least control—misalignment through macroeconomic policy is confronted.
Between 1990 and 2001 the Argentine peso appreciated by 80 percent in real terms, and its overvaluation has been singled out as one of the main suspects in the debate on the causes of the Argentina collapse of late 2001. This paper assesses the degree of real misalignment in Argentina over the Convertibility period using a model in which the equilibrium real exchange rate is defined as the value consistent with (i) a balance of payments position where any current account imbalance is financed by a sustainable flow of international capital (external equilibrium), and (ii) traded/nontraded sector productivity differentials (internal equilibrium). Empirical implementation of the model suggests that the initial real appreciation of the peso, between 1990 and 1993, was consistent with the productivity increases that Argentina enjoyed following the stabilization of the economy after the hyperinflation of the late 1980s. But after 1996 a widening gap opened between the observed real exchange rate and that consistent with a sustainable net foreign asset position. Our estimates indicate that in 2001 the peso was overvalued by over 50 percent. The model allows us to assess how much of the overvaluation resulted from Argentina's inadequate choice of anchor currency and how much from a divergence of fundamentals between the U.S. and Argentina, ultimately due to the maintenance of policies inconsistent with the peg. We find that both factors played a role in the overvaluation accumulated between 1977 and 2001 that preceded the collapse of the Convertibility regime.
Recent findings in the growth literature suggest that developing countries need to keep a devalued exchange rate to stimulate their economic growth. Building on these findings, we econometrically evaluate to what ex-tent the real exchange rate of Pakistan has been aligned with its economic fundamentals, and find that the Pa-kistan rupee has been significantly and systematically overvalued during the last years. We then simulate the general equilibrium effects of an eventual re-alignment of the real exchange rate with economic fundamen-tals, and find not only an expected increase in the relative size of the tradable sector - where productivity in-creases tend to be faster but also an associated improvement in the income of the poorest groups.
The impact of real exchange rate movements on GDP growth is a hotly debated issue both in policy and academic circles. In this paper, we provide evidence suggesting that the association between exchange rate misalignment and growth for a broad panel of countries is very weak. Controlling for country fixed effects, time effects and initial GDP, a more depreciated currency is associated with higher growth if one does not exclude outliers. However, this positive association always vanishes after controling for the savings rate. Importantly, this applies for both a large panel of countries and for the emerging economies subsample.
