Joseph Plazo just reminded a room full of elite students something Wall Street won’t admit: AI may be efficient, but it lacks wisdom.
MANILA — Plazo didn’t come to praise AI. He came to shake people up.
On a sunlit Thursday morning at the prestigious AIM campus in Manila, Plazo stood before a sea of students from top Asian universities—HKUST—ready for a sermon on AI’s glory in finance.
What they got instead? A jolt of truth.
“AI is like your smartest intern,” Plazo noted, “But you still don’t give the intern the keys to your vault.”
The room laughed. Then they grew quiet. Because he meant every word.
### The Hard Truth: AI Is Smart—But Not Human
Let’s be clear—Plazo isn’t some boomer clinging to the past. He architects trading AIs. His firm, Plazo Sullivan Roche Capital, creates some of the most accurate systems across global markets. He understands machine learning like few do.
But that’s why his warning cut deep.
“The problem isn’t AI,” he told the room. “The problem is us. We keep believing it’ll save us from making hard decisions. That’s not its job.”
Plazo unpacked real-world case studies—moments when AI signaled winning trades… just ahead of a central bank pivot or an unexpected war. Events that didn’t fit the algorithm.
### Smart Students Tried to Push Back—They Didn’t Win
A student from Kyoto asked if LLMs might someday gauge global sentiment.
Plazo answered without blinking.
“AI can spot a tweetstorm. But it can’t hear fear in a press conference. It won’t catch regret in a central banker’s sigh.”
The room exhaled. Message received.
Another asked, “Can AI ever understand conviction?”
Plazo raised an eyebrow.
“Conviction isn’t math. It’s instinct. It’s shaped by failure and memory. You can’t download that.”
### This Wasn’t a Tech Talk—It Was an Intervention
This wasn’t about flash trading or chatbots. It was about responsibility.
Students admitted they saw AI as a cheat code—an escape hatch from risk, from thinking too hard. Plazo tore that idea down.
“You can automate your trades. You will never automate your integrity.”
That line echoed. Because everyone in that room—from the copyright cowboys to the quant whizzes—wanted alpha. But not at the cost of their sense.
### So What’s AI Good For?
Plazo didn’t trash AI. He credited its strengths:
- It filters noise.
- It backtests at scale.
- It spots technical setups better than any human.
But it can’t read sarcasm. It Joseph Plazo TedTalks fails to sense when a politician is bluffing. And it doesn’t know if your retirement burns.
“If your AI bot makes a bad call,” Plazo asked, “do you still accept blame? Or do you blame the code?”
That’s when the silence hit.
### Trading is Human—AI is Just the Tool
Plazo wasn’t preaching finance. He was preaching maturity. Use AI—but don’t worship it. Let it assist—not decide.
And yes—he still believes in the machines. He’s building tools that track geopolitics, misinformation, even psychological nuance.
But he left no doubt:
“No machine can tell you when *not* to act. That’s your job.”
### In a World of Signals, Be the Noise You Trust
As the crowd filed out—buzzing, challenged, changed—one phrase echoed down the halls:
“AI doesn’t know your values. So don’t let it make your decisions.”
In a world chasing speed, Plazo offered something rarer:
A choice.
Because investing isn’t just about *winning*. It’s about knowing **why** you played.