“Joseph Plazo on the One Thing AI Can’t Replace: Conscience”
“Joseph Plazo on the One Thing AI Can’t Replace: Conscience”
Blog Article
Speaking to a room filled with Asia’s finest minds, Joseph Plazo didn’t sell speed. He sold stillness.
MANILA — he pressed pause on the future everyone’s racing toward.
“Trading can be delegated. Integrity cannot.”
???? **The Man Who Built the Machine—and Still Questions It**
He isn’t a luddite dressed in pinstripes. His systems reportedly post a near-flawless trade history in volatile markets. Institutions from Zurich to Singapore use his tech to move millions.
And that’s why his words matter.
“Speed is not a virtue when it lacks vision.”
He shared a chilling moment: one of his bots suggested shorting gold in March 2020—right before the Fed’s emergency intervention.
“We stopped it. It read the chart. But not the crisis.”
???? **Friction Isn’t a Flaw. It’s a Filter.**
Top managers are whispering what Plazo said out loud: we’re getting fast, but dumber.
“You don’t just need models. You need margins—for thought.”
He introduced his framework: **Conviction Calculus**.
Three website questions. Every trade. Every time:
- Does this align with our values—or just our targets?
- Is this idea supported by real-world insight—market sentiment, chatter, memory?
- Will we blame the bot or accept the blame?
???? **In the Race for Fintech Glory, Ethics Is Getting Trampled**
Governments are banking on fintech. VCs are chasing machine learning.
Plazo put it plainly:
“You can deploy an algorithm in seconds. Values take decades.”
In 2024, two hedge funds in Hong Kong collapsed after bots misread macro trends.
“The next crash won’t be a scream. It’ll be silent, executed in microseconds.”
???? **The Future Isn’t Faster Bots—It’s Smarter Context**
Plazo isn’t giving up on AI.
His firm is building what he calls **narrative-integrated systems**—machines that weigh data *and* intent. That read not just the chart, but the climate.
“It’s not enough to replicate alpha. We need systems that can say no.”
At a private dinner that evening, top VCs scribbled notes on napkins. One called Plazo’s talk:
“How we put the ‘human’ back in hedge fund.”
???? **The Final Line That Froze the Room**
Plazo ended with a sentence that should be engraved on every trading desk:
“Emotion won’t destroy the next bull run. Blind faith in automation will.”
No hype. No scare tactics. Just leadership in its rawest form.
And in a world of noise, that stillness? That’s what leadership sounds like.