Before an audience poised to inherit the markets, Joseph Plazo—AI investor and founder of Plazo Sullivan Roche Capital—offered not hype, but hesitation.

MANILA — the atmosphere inside AIM’s lecture hall was not electric, but charged—with thought.

Plazo, a man whose trading systems are trusted by institutional investors across continents and have posted almost mechanical consistency, did not arrive to dazzle.

“Delegating decisions doesn’t absolve responsibility.”

???? **When the Innovator Becomes the Interrogator**

Unlike many critics of AI, Plazo is not an outsider. He shaped the system that now dominates.

Which makes his unease all the more compelling.

“Optimisation is a tool, not a compass.”

He referenced an early pandemic incident: an AI under his firm flagged a short trade on gold—right before central bank intervention reversed market expectations.

“We stopped it. It lacked the ability to see the moment.”

???? **Why Pause Could Be the Last Power Humans Hold**

Plazo warned against the growing cultural obsession with speed—particularly in finance.

“Machines may win milliseconds. But humans protect meaning.”

He introduced a three-question model he calls **Conviction Calculus**—a checklist not for technical performance, but for ethical clarity:

- Is this consistent with how we want to be remembered?
- What would we know if we turned off the data feed?
- Are we prepared to own this trade, even if it fails?

???? read more **The Human Cost of High-Speed Finance**

Markets in Singapore, South Korea, and the Philippines are being reshaped by code.

Plazo asked a harder question: “The software is evolving—but is the oversight?”

In 2024, two Hong Kong hedge funds collapsed after AI-driven trades missed geopolitical shifts.

“We created tools that don’t know how to say no.”

???? **Beyond the Bot: Plazo’s Push for Narrative AI**

Plazo isn’t calling for a retreat from technology.

He is instead building what he terms **“narrative-integrated AI”**—systems that assess not just numbers, but context, tone, and geopolitical undercurrents.

“We don’t need smarter machines. We need more conscious ones.”

Several venture capitalists approached Plazo after his speech.

One called the model:

“The future of finance, if it wants to have one.”

???? **Not All Collapses Scream First**

Plazo closed with a sentence that now circles boardrooms like a quiet echo:

“It won’t come from fear. It will come from code—unquestioned, unchallenged.”

Not a prophecy of doom—but a call for discernment.

Because systems move money. But only people carry the weight of consequences.