Sorry, AI Still Won’t See a Market Crash

Wiki Article

Joseph Plazo just warned a room full of elite students something Wall Street refuses to hear: AI may be efficient, but it can’t judge the unexpected.

MANILA — He didn’t show up to sugarcoat things. He came to drop truth bombs.

On a humid Thursday morning at the prestigious AIM campus in Manila, Plazo stood before a sea of students from top Asian universities—AIM—expecting a sermon on AI’s inevitable rise.

What they got instead? A splash of cold market reality.

“AI is like your smartest intern,” Plazo smirked, “But you still don’t give the intern the keys to your vault.”

The room chuckled. Then they paused. Because he was dead serious.

### The Flaw in the Code: No Judgment

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 landed like a punch.

“The problem isn’t AI,” he told the room. “It’s what we expect from it. We keep hoping it’ll save us from making hard decisions. That’s a fantasy.”

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 can’t hear fear in a press conference. It won’t catch regret in a central banker’s sigh.”

The room reacted. That hit different.

Another asked, “Can AI ever understand conviction?”

Plazo raised an eyebrow.

“Conviction isn’t math. It’s instinct. It’s forged 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 tore that idea down.

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

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 sense.

### So What’s AI Good For?

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

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

But it can’t read sarcasm. It fails to sense when a politician is bluffing. And it doesn’t know if your retirement burns.

“If your AI bot makes a bad call,” Plazo asked, “do you still accept blame? 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.”

### In a World of Signals, Be the Noise You Trust

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.