Knowledge panels arguably add a layer of authoritativeness. But your beef is really with individual names being used as a web search key generally (whether on Google or something else). And the reality is if you have a less common but not unique name, you may end up confused with other people in situations where the searcher isn't really interested in putting in much effort to disambiguate the results.

The only real (imperfect) thing you can if it becomes a problem is to adopt some working name variant that is unique. But that only really helps if you do it up-front.

ADDED: You're probably reasonably safe with a common name. No one expects Joe Smith to be unique. The real problem is when you share a name with only one or two people and they have a big and negative Internet presence.