Sorry, AI Still Won’t See a Market Crash

Wiki Article

Joseph Plazo just warned a room full of top-tier future analysts something Wall Street has been avoiding for years: AI may be powerful, but it’s not wise.

MANILA — He didn’t show up to sugarcoat things. He came to crack illusions.

On a sunlit Thursday morning at the Asian Institute of Management in Manila, Plazo addressed a sea of students from top Asian universities—Kyoto—expecting a sermon on AI’s inevitable rise.

What they got instead? A masterclass in humility.

“AI is like your smartest intern,” Plazo quipped, “But you still don’t give the intern the keys to your vault.”

The room broke into giggles. Then they stilled. Because he wasn’t joking.

### AI’s Blind Spot? Human Nature

Let’s be clear—Plazo isn’t some Luddite clinging to the past. He builds trading AIs. His firm, Plazo Sullivan Roche Capital, creates some of the most accurate systems on global markets. He understands machine learning like few do.

But that’s why his warning felt urgent.

“The problem isn’t AI,” he told the room. “It’s our wishful thinking. We keep dreaming it’ll save us from making hard decisions. It won’t.”

Plazo shared 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 didn’t flinch.

“AI can catch 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 reacted. That hit different.

Another asked, “Can AI ever understand conviction?”

Plazo raised an eyebrow.

“Conviction isn’t math. It’s gut. It’s forged by failure and memory. You can’t download that.”

### Plazo’s Words = Financial Therapy

This wasn’t about flash trading or chatbots. It was about ethics.

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 can’t automate your values.”

That line slapped. Because everyone in that room—from the copyright cowboys to the quant whizzes—wanted alpha. But not at the cost of why they started.

### AI’s Real Role? Powerful—But Limited.

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 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 own it? 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 click here world chasing speed, Plazo offered something rarer:

A choice.

Because investing isn’t just about *winning*. It’s about knowing **why** you played.