When AI Met Its Human Reckoning
When AI Met Its Human Reckoning
Blog Article
The scene was set for celebration. What unfolded was a reckoning.
In the sunlit academic halls of UP Diliman, delegates from NUS, Kyoto, HKUST, and AIM assembled to explore the future of investing through algorithms.
They expected Plazo to hand them a blueprint to machine-driven wealth.
They were wrong.
---
### 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.
---
### 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.
---
### The Smartest Students in Asia Push Back
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.”
---
### The Real Problem Isn’t AI. It’s Us.
Plazo’s core argument wasn’t that AI is broken. It’s that humans are outsourcing responsibility.
“People are worshipping outputs like oracles.”
Still, he clarified: AI belongs in the cockpit—not in the captain’s seat.
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 website the next decade.”
---
### 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.”
---
### Sermon on the Market
The ending was elegiac, not technical.
“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 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.