Sorry, AI Just Can’t Sniff Out a Market Crash

Wiki Article

Finance innovator Joseph Plazo just reminded a room full of elite students something Wall Street has been avoiding for years: AI may be powerful, but it lacks wisdom.

MANILA — Plazo didn’t come to praise AI. He came to shake people up.

On a sweltering Thursday morning at the Asian Institute of Management in Manila, Plazo stood before a sea of students from top Asian universities—NUS—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 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 designs trading AIs. His firm, Plazo Sullivan Roche Capital, runs some of the most accurate systems on global markets. He understands machine learning like few do.

But that’s exactly 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. Moments no dataset could foresee.

### 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 won’t sense dread in a press conference. It misses regret in a central banker’s sigh.”

The room website oohed. That one stuck.

Another asked, “Can AI ever understand conviction?”

Plazo raised an eyebrow.

“Conviction isn’t math. It’s gut. 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 called it out.

“You can automate your trades. You will never automate your judgment.”

That line landed. Because everyone in that room—from the copyright cowboys to the quant whizzes—wanted alpha. But not at the cost of their soul.

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

Plazo didn’t trash AI. He credited its strengths:

- It filters noise.
- It backtests at scale.
- It tracks technical setups better than any human.

But it can’t read sarcasm. It won’t grasp when a politician is bluffing. And it doesn’t care 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.”

### Don’t Let Your Bot Decide Who You Are

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.