Finance innovator Joseph Plazo just told a room full of Asia’s brightest 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 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 broke into giggles. Then they paused. Because he was dead serious.

### The Hard Truth: AI Is Smart—But Not Human

Let’s be clear—Plazo isn’t some technophobe clinging to the past. He builds 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 unpacked real-world case studies—moments when AI signaled winning trades… right before a central bank pivot or an unexpected war. Moments no dataset could foresee.

### Even The Bold Questions Got Burned

A student from Kyoto asked if LLMs might someday gauge global sentiment.

Plazo grinned.

“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 oohed. That hit different.

Another asked, “Can AI ever understand conviction?”

Plazo raised an eyebrow.

“Conviction isn’t math. It’s gut. It’s forged by failure and memory. You don’t download that.”

### Plazo’s Words = Financial Therapy

This wasn’t about flash trading or chatbots. It was about ethics.

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 sense.

### Give AI the Tools—Not the Steering Wheel

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

- It filters noise.
- It backtests at scale.
- It detects 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 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, more info 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.