In a keynote address that fused engineering insights with emotional intelligence, fintech visionary Joseph Plazo confronted the beliefs held by the academic elite: the future still belongs to humans who can think.

MANILA — The ovation at the end wasn’t routine—it reflected a deep, perhaps uneasy, resonance. Within the echoing walls of UP’s lecture forum, future leaders from NUS, Kyoto, HKUST and AIM expected a triumphant ode to AI’s dominance in finance.

But they left with something deeper: a challenge.

Joseph Plazo, the architect behind high-accuracy trading machines, chose not to pitch another product. Instead, he opened with a paradox:

“AI can beat the market. But only if you teach it when not to try.”

Phones were lowered.

It wasn’t a sermon on efficiency—it was a meditation on limits.

### Machines Without Meaning

In a methodical dissection, Plazo attacked the assumption that AI can fully replace human intuition.

He displayed footage of algorithmic blunders— trades that defied logic, machines acting on misread signals, and neural nets confused by human nuance.

“ Most of what we call AI is trained on yesterday. But investing happens tomorrow.”

It wasn’t alarmist. It was sobering.

Then came the core question.

“ Can your code feel the 2008 crash? Not the price charts—the dread. The stunned silence. The smell of collapse?”

Silence.

### When Students Pushed Back

Bright minds pushed back.

A doctoral student from Kyoto proposed that large language models are already picking up on emotional cues.

Plazo nodded. “ Yes. But knowing someone is angry doesn’t mean you know what they’ll do. ”

Another student from HKUST asked if real-time data and news more info could eventually simulate conviction.

Plazo replied:
“You can simulate storms. But you can’t fake the thunder. Conviction isn't just data—it’s character.”

### The Tools—and the Trap

Plazo warned of a coming danger: not faulty AI, but blind faith in it.

He described traders who no longer read earnings reports or monetary policy—they just obeyed the algorithm.

“This is not evolution. It’s abdication.”

Still, he wasn’t preaching rejection.

He runs layered AI systems to dissect market sentiment—but never without human oversight.

“The most dangerous phrase of the next decade,” he warned, “will be: ‘The model told me to do it.’”

### Asia’s Crossroads

The message hit home in Asia, where automation is often embraced uncritically.

“Automation here is almost sacred,” noted Dr. Anton Leung, AI ethicist. “The warning is clear: intelligence without interpretation is still dangerous.”

During a closed-door discussion afterward, Plazo urged for AI literacy—not just in code, but in consequence.

“Make them question, not just program.”

Final Words

His final words were more elegy than pitch.

“The market,” Plazo said, “is not a spreadsheet. It’s a novel. And if your AI doesn’t read character, it will miss the plot.”

There was no cheering.

They stood up—quietly.

A professor compared it to hearing Taleb for the first time.

Plazo didn’t sell a vision.

And for those who came to worship at the altar of AI,
it was the sermon they didn’t expect—but needed to hear.