“Automated Finance and the Ethics It Leaves Behind”
“Automated Finance and the Ethics It Leaves Behind”
Blog Article
Inside the auditorium of the Asian Institute of Management, Joseph Plazo—AI investor and founder of Plazo Sullivan Roche Capital—delivered not predictions, but a pointed pause.
As the Philippines builds its reputation as a technology hub — 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 near-perfect results in volatile markets, did not arrive to dazzle.
“Delegating decisions doesn’t absolve responsibility.”
???? **When the Innovator Becomes the Interrogator**
He doesn’t throw stones from the sidelines. He built the bots that move the markets.
Which makes his unease all the more compelling.
“What machines optimise, humans must justify.”
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. The model was technically sound—but contextually catastrophic.”
???? **The Case for Slowness in a Market That Won’t Wait**
Plazo warned against the growing cultural obsession with speed—particularly in finance.
“Delay isn’t inefficiency—it’s responsibility.”
He introduced a three-question model he calls **Conviction Calculus**—a checklist not for technical performance, but for ethical clarity:
- Is this trade aligned with the values of the firm—or just its ambition?
- What would we know if we read more turned off the data feed?
- Are we prepared to own this trade, even if it fails?
???? **The Human Cost of High-Speed Finance**
The investment in algorithmic systems is massive, and largely unregulated.
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’ve built machines that never blink. But who teaches them when to look away?”
???? **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:
“What regulation failed to build, this framework might.”
???? **The Next Market Failure May Begin With a Perfectly Executed Mistake**
Plazo closed with a sentence that now circles boardrooms like a quiet echo:
“It won’t be noise that breaks us. It’ll be silence.”
It wasn’t an attack on AI—it was an appeal to remain human.
Because we built the machines. But we still write the stories.