At a lecture hall in Manila, Joseph Plazo laid down the gauntlet on what AI can and cannot achieve for the world of investing—and why that distinction matters now more than ever.
You could feel the electricity in the crowd. Students—some eagerly recording on their phones, others streaming the moment live—waited for a man both celebrated and controversial in AI circles.
“AI will make trades for you,” Plazo began, calm but direct. “It won’t tell you when not to trust them.”
Over the next sixty minutes, he took the audience from Silicon Valley to Shanghai, touching on everything from quantum computing to cognitive bias. His central claim: Artificial intelligence is impressive—but it lacks soul.
---
Top Students Meet a Tough Truth
Before him sat students and faculty from a multi-nation academic alliance, gathered under a technology consortium.
Many expected a praise-filled keynote of AI's dominance. What they received was a provocation.
“There’s a growing religion around AI,” said Prof. Maria Castillo, an Oxford visiting fellow. “This lecture here was a rare, necessary dose of skepticism.”
---
When Algorithms Miss the Mark
Plazo’s core thesis was both simple and unsettling: machines lack context.
“AI is fearless, but also clueless,” he warned. “It finds trends, but not intentions.”
He cited examples like the market chaos of early 2020, noting, “By the time the algorithms adjusted, the humans were already positioned.”
---
The Astronomer Analogy
Rather than dismiss AI, Plazo proposed a partnership.
“AI is the telescope—but you are still the astronomer,” he said. It sees—but doesn’t think.
Students pressed him on behavioral economics, to which Plazo acknowledged: “Sure, it can flag Reddit anomalies—but it can’t feel a market’s pulse.”
---
The Ripple Effect on a Digital Generation
The talk left a mark.
“I thought AI could replace intuition,” said Lee Min-Seo, a quant-in-training from South Korea. “Now I see it’s judgment, not just data, that matters.”
In a post-talk panel, tech mentors agreed with his sentiment. “These kids speak machine natively—but instinct,” said Dr. Raymond Tan, “doesn’t replace perspective.”
---
What’s Next? AI That Thinks in Narratives
Plazo shared that his firm is building “symbiotic systems”—AI that blends pattern recognition with real-world awareness.
“Ethics can’t be outsourced to software,” he reminded. “Judgment remains human territory.”
---
An Ending That Sparked a Beginning
As Plazo exited the stage, the hall erupted. But more importantly, they lingered.
“I came for machine learning,” said a PhD candidate. “But I left understanding myself better.”
Perhaps, in drawing boundaries for AI, we expand our own.