At a lecture hall in Manila, tech entrepreneur and investment icon Joseph Plazo drew a bold line on what technology can realistically offer for the world of investing—and why this difference is increasingly crucial.
The air was charged with anticipation. A sea of bright minds—some clutching notebooks, others broadcasting to friends across Asia—waited for a man both celebrated and controversial in AI circles.
“Algorithms can execute,” Plazo opened with authority. “It won’t tell you when not to trust them.”
Over the next hour, 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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The Audience: Elite, Curious—and Disarmed
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, a respected AI ethicist from the UK. “We need this kind of discomfort in academia.”
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When Algorithms Miss the Mark
Plazo’s core thesis was both simple and unsettling: machines lack context.
“AI doesn’t panic—but it doesn’t anticipate,” he warned. “It finds trends, but not intentions.”
He cited examples like machine-driven funds failing to respond to COVID news, noting, “By the time the algorithms adjusted, the humans were already positioned.”
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The Astronomer Analogy
He didn’t bash the machines—he put them in their place.
“AI is the here vehicle—but you decide the direction,” 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.”
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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. “Turns out, insight can’t be uploaded.”
In a post-talk panel, tech mentors agreed with 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.
“Ethics can’t be outsourced to software,” he reminded. “Belief isn’t programmable.”
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The Speech That Started a Thousand Debates
As Plazo exited the stage, students applauded. 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.