When AI Met Its Human Reckoning
When AI Met Its Human Reckoning
Blog Article
Everyone expected triumph. Instead, it became a confrontation.
In the sunlit academic halls of UP Diliman, Asia’s brightest students—engineers, economists, AI researchers—converged to explore the future of investing through algorithms.
They expected Plazo to hand them a blueprint to machine-driven wealth.
They were wrong.
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### The Sentence That Changed the Room
Joseph Plazo is no stranger to accolades.
As he stepped onto the podium, the room quieted.
“AI can beat the market. But only if you teach it when not to try.”
A chill passed through the room.
It wasn’t a thesis. It was a riddle.
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### A Lecture or a Lament?
Plazo didn’t pitch software.
He projected mistakes—algorithms buying at peaks, shorting at troughs, mistaking irony for euphoria.
“These systems are reflections—not predictions.”
Then, with a pause that felt like a punch, he asked:
“ Can it compute the panic of dominoes falling on Wall Street? Not the charts. The *emotion*.”
You could hear a breath fall.
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### But What About Conviction?
They didn’t sit quietly. These were doctoral minds.
A PhD student from Kyoto noted how large language models now detect emotion in text.
Plazo nodded. “Knowing someone’s angry doesn’t tell you why—or what comes next.”
A data scientist from HKUST proposed that probabilistic models could one day simulate conviction.
Plazo’s reply was metaphorical:
“You can simulate weather. But conviction? That’s lightning. You can’t forecast where it’ll strike. Only feel when it does.”
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### The Real Problem Isn’t AI. It’s Us.
He didn’t bash AI. He bashed our blind obedience to it.
“People are worshipping outputs like oracles.”
Yet his own firm uses AI—but wisely.
His company’s systems scan sentiment, order flow, and liquidity.
“But every output is double-checked by human eyes.”
And with grave calm, he said:
“‘The model told me to do it.’ That’s what we’ll hear after every disaster in the next decade.”
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### The Warning That Cut Through the Code
Across Asian tech hubs, AI is gospel.
Dr. Anton Leung, a Singapore-based ethicist, whispered after the talk:
“He reminded us: tools without ethics are just sharp objects.”
In a private dialogue among professors, Plazo pressed the point:
“Don’t just teach students to *code* AI. Teach them to *think* with it.”
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### No Clapping. Just Standing.
The crowd expected a crescendo. They got a challenge.
“The market isn’t math,” he said. “ It’s a tragedy, a comedy, a thriller—written by humans. And if your AI can’t read more read character, it’ll miss the plot.”
No one moved.
Some said it reminded them of Jobs at Stanford.
He came to remind us: we are still responsible.