Everyone expected triumph. But what happened instead left the audience reeling.

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— neural nets falling apart under real-world pressure.

“Most models,” he said, “are just statistical mirrors of the past.

Then, with a pause that felt like a punch, he asked:

“ Can it grasp the disbelief as Lehman fell? Not the charts. The *emotion*.”

The silence became the answer.

---

### Tension in the Halls of Thought

Of course, the audience pushed back.

A PhD student from Kyoto noted how large language models now detect emotion in text.

Plazo nodded. “Detection is not understanding.”

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 Trap Isn’t in the Code—It’s in the Belief

He didn’t bash AI. He bashed our read more blind obedience to it.

“This isn’t innovation. It’s surrender.”

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.”

---

### 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.”

---

### 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 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.