Refining the human premium: When AI makes perfection cheap, imperfect you are the most expensive asset

*▲ This article was originally published in “Economic Daily (opens in a new tab)”. Here is the full version with more context and extended links. *

In the past few years, companies have been frantically pursuing the automation of marketing technology, trying to use algorithms to accurately calculate click-through rates every second, and using AI to batch produce tens of thousands of search engine optimization articles. We once thought that as long as the content was accurate enough and the speed was fast enough, we could win the market.

But the essence of marketing is communication, and the underlying logic of communication is trust. When everyone can use a prompt word to write a PR draft or blog article with a rigorous structure and perfect start and transition, the marginal value of these content (opens in a new tab) will approach zero. Consumers will be on guard at one glance: Is this written by a machine again? This mentality leads to the breakdown of trust.

At this time, the value of the human premium becomes apparent. It does not mean rejecting AI, but means that in a world where machine output is highly standardized, the time, emotions, unique perspectives, and deliberate imperfections invested by humans have become the rarest luxuries.

Just like after the industrial revolution, machine-woven fabrics are more uniform and cheaper than hand-woven fabrics, but people are willing to pay ten times the price to buy a piece of fabric with hand-made flaws. The logic of digital marketing is heading towards the same evolution.

To extract the human premium in marketing and brand management, it must be understood that it is composed of three supporting points.

Support point 1: Reveal value and let the traces of hard work be seen

The first is to reveal the value, which is the trace of hard work. There is a famous IKEA effect (opens in a new tab) in psychology, which means that people will attach higher value to the things they participate in making. There is a similar logic in content consumption: when consumers realize that there is someone’s real time and effort behind this work, they are more inclined to repay it.

AI can analyze 10,000 financial reports and produce summaries, but it cannot replace your experience of entrepreneurial failure, late-night anxiety, and tears at the moment of success. Those reports of on-site visits and product formulas that were formulated after countless experiments are life experiences (opens in a new tab) that cannot be simulated by machines.

Support point 2: Weakness marketing, only imperfections appear real

The second is vulnerability marketing. AI never makes mistakes, but this is its greatest flaw, because it lacks humanity. The core of human nature lies in our fragility and imperfection.

In recent years, on many social platforms, the most popular ones are often not carefully packaged brand videos, but the true words recorded directly by the founder sitting on the floor in the office with his mobile phone: confessing that the product development was stuck this time, admitting that he made a stupid mistake, or unsuspecting behind-the-scenes footage. This sense of realism without false modifications creates extremely high emotional value.

This is why the AI ​​era is opening up a cruel watershed: the more you hide yourself behind the flawless machine output, the easier it is to be overwhelmed; the more you dare to reveal your true humanity, the more scarce it becomes.

Support point three: Personal brand, you are the decoder of information

Finally, it is the personal brand that serves as the decoder. Faced with the explosion of information, consumers no longer need more information, what they need is opinions. Personal brand is the highest human premium.

The same sentence has completely different weight when spoken by an anonymous AI than when spoken by an expert who you have followed for many years and understands his values ​​​​and professional background. People have become the decoder and filter of information. What we pay is not the text, but the credibility of that person.

This also echoes something I have repeatedly emphasized: The key to the survival of personal brands in 2026 is no longer to be seen, but to be trusted and cited. In a world where AI dominates answer distribution, a person with a clear identity and credible signals is the person that the machine is willing to call repeatedly.

Human-machine collaboration: free up time and invest the expensive 20%

Faced with this trend, digital marketers and knowledge workers should not blindly resist AI, but should think about how to free up their time through human-machine collaboration to create higher value.

We can use AI to collect early data, organize frameworks, and even correct typos in the first draft; humans focus on the final 20% of key adjustments, adding your unique sense of humor, personal stories, and delicate observations of human nature. Rather than treating AI as a machine that produces answers, let it be your thinking partner. The 20% fine-tuning is to make the content jump from a mediocre AI feeling to the key to human premium (opens in a new tab).

This mentality of human-machine collaboration is particularly important in academic research and writing scenarios. What is most valuable to researchers is never the speed of output, but the quality of questioning, rigor of argumentation, and unique judgment of materials. These are the parts that AI cannot do for you.

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*▲ If you are a researcher or knowledge worker and want to learn to collaborate with AI under a rigorous premise, welcome to my AI-empowered academic research and writing practical workshop (opens in a new tab). I will help you hand over the tedious work of document sorting and data crawling to AI, while maintaining the boundaries of academic ethics and keeping the most critical judgments, arguments, and original opinions firmly in your own hands. That is your most irreplaceable human premium. *

When technology makes perfection cheap, imperfect but real individuals become the most expensive assets. In this era of total automation, please boldly show your characteristics, because that is where your most irreplaceable premium lies.

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