In a packed amphitheater at the University of the Philippines, Joseph Plazo laid down the gauntlet on what AI can and cannot achieve for the future of finance—and why understanding this may define who wins in tomorrow’s markets.
You could feel the electricity in the crowd. Students—some eagerly recording on their phones, others streaming the moment live—waited for a man revered for blending code with contrarianism.
“AI will make trades for you,” Plazo began, calm but direct. “But it won’t teach you why to believe in them.”
Over the next sixty minutes, he took the audience from Silicon Valley to Shanghai, intertwining machine logic with human flaws. His central claim: Artificial intelligence is impressive—but it lacks soul.
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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. Plazo had other plans.
“There’s a rising cult of algorithmic faith,” said Prof. Maria Castillo, an Oxford visiting fellow. “This lecture was a rare, necessary dose of skepticism.”
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The Machine’s Blindness: Plazo’s Case for Caution
Plazo’s core thesis was both simple and unsettling: AI does not grasp nuance.
“AI is fearless, but also clueless,” he warned. “It detects movements, but misses motives.”
He cited examples like AI systems freezing during the 2020 pandemic declaration, noting, “AI lagged—while humans had already hedged.”
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Wisdom in a World of Code
He didn’t bash the machines—he put them in their place.
“AI is the telescope—but you are still the astronomer,” he said. It sees—but doesn’t think.
Students pressed him on sentiment tracking, to which Plazo acknowledged: “Sure, it can flag Reddit anomalies—but it can’t feel a market’s pulse.”
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The Ripple Effect on a Digital Generation
The talk left a mark.
“I believed in the supremacy of code,” said Lee Min-Seo, a quant-in-training from South Korea. “Turns out, insight can’t be uploaded.”
In a post-talk panel, tech mentors agreed with more info his sentiment. “They’ve been raised by data—but instinct,” said Dr. Raymond Tan, “is only half the story.”
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Co-Intelligence: Merging Math with Meaning
Plazo shared that his firm is building “hybrid cognition models”—AI that understands not just volatility, but motive.
“Only you can judge character,” he reminded. “Belief isn’t programmable.”
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The Speech That Started a Thousand Debates
As Plazo exited the stage, the crowd rose. But more importantly, they lingered.
“I came for machine learning,” said a PhD candidate. “But I got a lesson in human insight.”
And maybe that’s the real power of AI’s limits: they force us to rediscover our own.