Amid the warm Manila breeze, in a university hall buzzing with intellect, tech entrepreneur and investment icon Joseph Plazo made a striking distinction on what machines can and cannot do for the economic frontier—and why this difference is increasingly crucial.
The air was charged with anticipation. A sea of bright minds—some eagerly recording on their phones, others broadcasting to friends across Asia—waited for a man both celebrated and controversial in AI circles.
“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, Plazo delivered a fast-paced masterclass, intertwining machine logic with human flaws. His central claim: AI is brilliant, but blind.
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Top Students Meet a Tough Truth
Before him sat students and faculty from a multi-nation academic alliance, assembled under a pan-Asian finance forum.
Many expected a victory lap of AI's dominance. Instead, they got a reality check.
“There’s a rising cult of algorithmic faith,” said Prof. Maria Castillo, a respected AI ethicist from the UK. “Plazo’s words were uncomfortable—but essential.”
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Why AI Still Doesn’t Get It
Plazo’s core thesis was both simple and unsettling: here code can’t read between the lines.
“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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Reclaiming the Edge: Why Humans Still Matter
Rather than dismiss AI, Plazo proposed a partnership.
“AI is the vehicle—but you decide the direction,” he said. It works—but doesn’t wonder.
Students pressed him on behavioral economics, to which Plazo acknowledged: “Yes, it can scan Twitter sentiment—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.