This summer, I was attending a performance of The Sleeping Beauty at London’s Royal Albert Hall, when during a particularly ambitious dance lift, something went slightly awry and an audible gasp swept through the audience. The dancers recovered so quickly and continued so seamlessly, that the moment was gone almost before I could register what I had seen. Far from diminishing the experience, that flicker of uncertainty heightened everyone’s engagement, because it reminded us that we were watching genuine human excellence unfold in real time rather than a digitally perfected production. The possibility of imperfection made the achievement feel meaningful.
In an age when almost anything can be flawlessly rendered by a machine, that small margin of human error is turning into one of the most valuable things left on the market.
A similar current ran through a performance I enjoyed at the start of the summer season. While watching Harry Potter and the Cursed Child on Broadway, the audience erupted when Tom Felton stepped onto the stage, and the applause was already booming before he had spoken a single word. As strangers cheered together, it was impossible not to smile at the sheer, collective delight of hundreds of fans suddenly finding themselves in the presence of Draco Malfoy. It was a savvy move to promote the production that way, just as it has been savvy to bring some of the most beloved franchises to the stage more broadly; I loved seeing Stranger Things: The First Shadow in the theater, given my being a big fan of the Netflix series. If Millie Bobby Brown ever appears in a production herself, I suspect ticket prices will go through the roof.
These moments matter because we experience them together.
Millions of people around the world rearrange their schedules, miss work, and go without sleep to gather to watch the FIFA World Cup broadcasts live. Although a replay recording contains the same commentary and outcomes, it cannot recreate the feeling of uncertainty being shared with millions of individuals in the same instant waiting for a point to be scored.
Broadway, Cirque du Soleil, and even the wildly successful Savannah Bananas all rest on this same premise. Audiences will pay a real premium for something that cannot be perfectly replicated on a screen. Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour became a cultural phenomenon not because fans lacked access to her music, but because presence became part of the product.
The more digitally reproducible our world becomes, the more valuable these unreproducible moments become, and that principle is not confined to just arenas or theaters. It is quietly reshaping what makes a professional or an employee valuable as well.
Every major technological advance has prompted predictions that human labor would become less valuable. The Industrial Revolution mechanized production, computers automated calculation, and the internet placed the world’s information at our fingertips. Artificial intelligence is simply the latest chapter in that ongoing story. Yet if history is any guide, the real question was never whether people would remain valuable, but which human capabilities would become more valuable as the nature of work shifted around them.
Much of the conversation about AI centers on the technical work machines can increasingly perform, and as those capabilities spread, technical competence itself becomes less scarce. That doesn’t mean it stops mattering, only that possessing it stops being what sets someone apart. When everyone has access to the same sophisticated tools, competitive advantage has to come from somewhere else entirely.
Ironically, the qualities left standing are the ones organizations have long filed under “soft skills,” a label that has always undersold them. The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) consistently identifies communication, relationship management, ethical judgment, adaptability, and leadership among the traits employers want most. In a world where technical proficiency is increasingly standardized, soft skills will increasingly separate exceptional professionals from merely competent ones.
Technology can expand what any one person can accomplish, but it cannot replace the human judgment that drives market progress. Ludwig von Mises understood markets as dynamic processes shaped by purposeful action, changing preferences, and continual discovery. People create value not simply by possessing more information, but by imagining possibilities that do not yet exist and recognizing opportunities others have overlooked.
Friedrich Hayek extended this insight by explaining why markets are so effective at coordinating those discoveries. Much of the knowledge that shapes economic decisions is dispersed, local, and tacit. It emerges through experience, relationships, and context rather than formulas or databases. As technical competence becomes increasingly accessible, those uniquely human forms of knowledge also become more valuable.
This carries profound implications for both employment and education. Those who thrive will not simply be the people who know the most, but those who communicate effectively, exercise sound judgment, collaborate across disciplines, and inspire confidence when circumstances inevitably change.
Technology raises the floor on technical performance, but it simultaneously raises expectations surrounding the human experience wrapped around that performance. Rather than diminishing the importance of people, AI may ultimately elevate the importance of being fully human.
The future will almost certainly belong to those who embrace artificial intelligence rather than resist it. But the professionals who truly distinguish themselves will not compete against machines at what machines do best. They will invest even more deliberately in the qualities that cannot be downloaded, automated, or replicated on demand. In an economy where competence is increasingly assumed, character becomes competitive.
In that sense, the age of artificial intelligence may become an age in which the gasp in the audience, the eruption of applause, and the pull to watch something live instead of later will become our greatest competitive advantage.
