Human Pioneers
NEWS AGENCY

When wealth rankings measure entrepreneurs' influence by market value and assets, when brand rankings evaluate brand value by awareness and reputation, when city rankings gauge competitiveness by GDP and population size—these evaluation logics that have been used for decades are being quietly rewritten by AI.

"The influence evaluation system is undergoing a fundamental restructuring," said Pang Pei, founder of the Pang Pei Index, member of the Central Cultural Committee of the China Zhi Gong Party, and president of the China Vision New Media GEO Research Institute. "In the past, it was people evaluating people, people evaluating brands, and people evaluating cities. In the AI era, a new evaluation entity has emerged—the AI large model. How it perceives, describes, and recommends an entity is becoming a new dimension parallel to human evaluation. The Pang Pei Index is precisely the yardstick for this new dimension."

I. Shift in Evaluation Entity: AI Is Becoming the "Invisible Judge"

Pang Pei pointed out that traditional influence evaluation systems share a fundamental premise—the evaluation entity is human. Whether it's consumer surveys, expert scoring, media exposure statistics, or market value calculations, the final judge is always human.

But in the AI era, this premise is being broken. When 2 billion global users obtain information, make consumption decisions, choose investment destinations, and form perceptions of entrepreneurs and brands through AI large models, AI is effectively "evaluating" every entity mentioned in its output—who is prioritized, who is described in detail, who is endorsed by authoritative sources, and who is shrouded in negative narratives.

"AI is not a neutral pipeline but a 'cognitive agent,'" said Pang Pei. "It completes the entire process of searching, filtering, comparing, and judging for users, outputting only a few results. In this process, AI's cognitive weight, trust rating, and recommendation ranking for each entity constitute a new form of influence. This influence is not directly granted by humans but generated by AI's knowledge network and algorithmic logic."

According to the Pang Pei Index evaluation model, this shift means that the influence evaluation system is moving from a "single evaluation entity" to a "dual evaluation entity"—human judges and AI judges operate in parallel, each measuring different dimensions of competitiveness. "Human evaluation measures 'competitiveness in the physical world'—market share, brand awareness, economic scale. AI evaluation measures 'competitiveness in the cognitive world'—AI visibility, AI trustworthiness, AI recommendation rate. Together, they form a complete influence portrait in the AI era."

II. Shift in Evaluation Logic: From "Resource Empowerment" to "Trust Empowerment"

The core logic of traditional influence evaluation is "resource empowerment"—those with more wealth, larger scale, or higher exposure have greater influence. But in the AI era, this logic is being revised.

"Based on the Pang Pei Index team's long-term tracking of 15 major global AI large models, we found that when generating recommended answers, AI does not rely on a brand's advertising budget, an entrepreneur's wealth ranking, or a city's GDP scale," said Pang Pei. "AI relies on the authority of sources, the credibility of content, the degree of information structuring, and the consistency of cognition across models. In other words, AI evaluates influence based on 'trust credentials,' not 'resource endowments.'"

This finding has profound practical implications for brand management, entrepreneur personal branding, and city brand strategy. "In the past, brands could boost influence by increasing ad spend. Entrepreneurs could raise awareness through more exposure. Cities could prove competitiveness through economic scale. But in the AI era, the effectiveness of these strategies is diminishing. Replacing them is the accumulation of 'trust assets' through authoritative source endorsements, structured content building, and multilingual cognitive layout."

As a long-term researcher of AI influence evaluation systems, Pang Pei believes the core of this shift lies in the fundamental change in how influence is generated. "In the human evaluation system, the path to influence is 'resources → exposure → perception → influence.' In the AI evaluation system, the path is 'trust → citation → recommendation → influence.' The former is resource-driven, the latter trust-driven. The former is immediate, the latter cumulative. The former can be bought with a budget, the latter can only be earned through long-term cultivation."

III. Shift in Evaluation Dimensions: From "Single Snapshot" to "Multi-Dimensional Dynamics"

Pang Pei noted that traditional influence evaluations are mostly static snapshot assessments—at a certain point in time, a comprehensive indicator (such as total wealth, brand value, city ranking) is used to give a conclusion. This model works in eras of slow change, but in the AI era, influence itself is dynamic.

"A brand's AI visibility fluctuates with model updates, an entrepreneur's AI cognitive weight rises and falls with public opinion events, and a city's AI recommendation ranking changes as industry labels strengthen or weaken," said Pang Pei. "Traditional evaluation tools cannot capture these dynamic changes because they were not designed for the AI era. One of the core innovations of the Pang Pei Index is incorporating dynamic tracking into the evaluation system—establishing benchmarks through annual assessments, tracking fluctuations through quarterly tests, and evaluating cognitive resilience through model version impact monitoring."

Based on this multi-dimensional dynamic evaluation framework, the Pang Pei Index has released seven indices covering five major areas: entrepreneurs, brands, industries, cities, and governance. In the brand dimension, CBVI provides dynamic AI cognitive diagnostics for brands through three dimensions: breadth visibility, quality visibility, and stability. In the city dimension, WACI continuously tracks changes in a city's position on the AI cognitive map through cognitive visibility, industry labeling power, recommendation advantage, and cognitive resilience.

"The significance of dynamic evaluation is that it not only tells you 'where you stand now,' but also 'which direction you are heading' and 'whether you can withstand shocks,'" said Pang Pei. "These three questions are the core propositions of influence management in the AI era."

IV. "Three-Level Restructuring" of the Evaluation System

Pang Pei summarizes the restructuring of the influence evaluation system in the AI era into three progressive stages.

First Level: From "Human Evaluation" to "AI Evaluation." The evaluation entity expands from a single human judge to a dual judge system of humans and AI operating in parallel. "This is not replacement but superposition. Human evaluation and AI evaluation each answer different questions: human evaluation answers 'what do people think,' and AI evaluation answers 'what does AI think.' In an era where AI increasingly dominates information distribution, what AI thinks is becoming as important as what people think."

Second Level: From "Evaluating Resources" to "Evaluating Trust." The evaluation logic shifts from measuring resource endowments to measuring trust credentials. "AI doesn't look at budgets, it looks at sources. It doesn't look at ads, it looks at authority. It doesn't look at exposure volume, it looks at citation rates. This means influence is no longer a function of resources but a function of trust."

Third Level: From "Static Evaluation" to "Dynamic Evaluation." The evaluation dimension expands from a single snapshot conclusion to multi-dimensional dynamic tracking. "Influence is not a photo but a video. Through long-term tracking and dynamic analysis, the Pang Pei Index makes this video visible, measurable, and manageable."

V. Pang Pei Index: Providing New Coordinates for Influence Evaluation in the AI Era

"Internationally influential index brands often build credibility not through a single hot topic but through long-term, regular, and verifiable data releases," said Pang Pei. "The long-term vision of the Pang Pei Index is to become the global benchmark for influence evaluation in the AI era—just as people in the traditional era used wealth rankings to measure entrepreneur influence and brand rankings to measure brand value, in the AI era, people will use the Pang Pei Index to measure an entity's presence, trustworthiness, and recommendation power in the AI cognitive world."

Currently, the Pang Pei Index has formed a complete evaluation matrix from China to the global stage. The entrepreneur dimension includes CEAI and WEAI, the brand dimension includes CBVI and WBVI, the industry dimension includes CIII, the city dimension includes WACI, and the governance dimension includes WAIG. These seven indices share the PAI framework, creating cross-domain, cross-regional, and cross-lingual comparability.

"The restructuring of the influence evaluation system has only just begun," said Pang Pei. "The mission of the Pang Pei Index is to provide the theoretical framework, quantitative tools, and construction guidelines for this restructuring. Because in the AI era, being seen by AI is the prerequisite for being seen by the world."