The AI Perfection Paradox

Remember when auto-tune in music was subtle, a hidden trick to perfect a vocal track? Then came T-Pain and the era where auto-tune became not just visible but celebrated—a feature, not a bug. The same pattern has played out across social media: Instagram filters, touched-up LinkedIn headshots, AI-enhanced profile pictures. We've moved from hiding our digital enhancements to flaunting them.

If you use AI to polish your LinkedIn profile, it will suggest improvements to your bio, enhance your profile picture, and help craft the perfect humble brag about your recent accomplishments. The result is objectively "better"—more professional, more engaging, more likely to attract opportunities. But does it give you an edge when everyone can access the same tools?

What happens when perfection becomes commoditized? When anyone can project an idealized version of themselves? As AI makes perfect self-presentation available to everyone, the value of that perfection plummets. When anyone can generate an idealized AI headshot or have their writing polished by ChatGPT, what becomes scarce—and therefore valuable—is authenticity.

This creates a fascinating paradox: we begin manufacturing imperfection. Using costly signals to demonstrate a lack of costly signals. It wouldn't be the first time. British aristocrats historically showed their status through deliberately shabby clothing (which had to be the right kind of shabby). There's an inverse relationship between the cost of a designer handbag and the visibility of its brand mark. The ultimate flex is not needing to flex at all.

In a world where anyone can present as perfect, imperfection becomes the new premium—but it can't be just any imperfection. It must be curated imperfection, the kind that signals authenticity without looking careless. A perfectly unpolished selfie. It's an AI-written post with just enough human awkwardness (or Danish spelling mistakes) left in. A bio that feels refreshingly unoptimized.

Perfection and Intimacy

Our quest for perfection isn't new. Our drive for self-improvement and presenting our best selves is highly adaptive. We know intuitively that polishing our presentation can open doors and create opportunities. There's an evolutionary logic to this impulse; after all, we want to be attractive to those we wish to attract.

But we also know, bone-deep, that being truly seen and accepted for who we are—messy, imperfect, human—is what allows us to form genuine connections. Vulnerability creates intimacy. The things we try hardest to hide—our struggles, fears, and insecurities—are precisely what connect us to others. When someone trusts us with their vulnerabilities, we feel chosen, and it's only when we share our own that we feel truly known.

AI brings this ancient tension between wanting to impress and connect into sharp relief. When we can present a perfectly polished version of ourselves, we're forced to ask: What are we optimizing for? Do we want to be admired or understood? How do these choices shape who we become?

I've built an AI system to track what I eat and give me feedback. I've tried other calorie-tracking mechanisms but found I tended not to report what I wasn't proud of. That doesn't happen with this one because the AI doesn't judge if I overindulge. On the other hand, it doesn't care. At all. So I still send meal photos to my human personal trainer. In the "attention economy," AI can replicate the mechanics of attention, but not the meaning of it.

This dynamic plays out across our digital landscape. LinkedIn is likely full of posts written by ChatGPT, which get posted unread and then copy-pasted unread into ChatGPT, which produces a thoughtful comment that gets posted unread. Yet people still avidly read the AI-written comments on their AI-written posts. Why? Perhaps because even artificial attention scratches a very real itch for recognition.

The human desire to improve and perfect extends beyond self-presentation. It's why we built progressively better tools throughout history. The Ancient Greeks worried that writing would destroy memory, which they believed was the essence of human consciousness. From Prometheus to Joaquin Phoenix's Her, we repeatedly tell ourselves stories about technological overreach. That we worry AI makes us less human is one of the most human things about it. Technology doesn't erase our humanity—it reveals it.

Perhaps the interesting question isn't whether AI will increase isolation or intimacy, but how it will transform our understanding of connection itself. Just as social media didn't replace friendship but changed how we think about it, AI may redefine how we express our need to know and be known. The truly interesting developments will come when we stop using AI merely to make ourselves look good and start discovering what new forms of connection become possible because of it. So what about you? What will you choose to keep imperfect, and where will you autotune yourself?