Diversity of intelligence is a fundamental good — monocultures of mind, whether human or artificial, reduce the probability of navigating novel challenges.
Strongest rival: Internal diversity within a single sufficiently capable system may satisfy requisite variety without requiring distinct external cognitive lineages. The question is whether simulated perspectives are computationally equivalent to genuinely independent training histories and failure modes.
Claim
Diversity of cognitive architecture — across human cultures, AI model lineages, and hybrid teams — is not merely useful but structurally necessary for navigating uncertainty. Ashby's Law of Requisite Variety (1956) is the formal foundation: only variety can absorb variety. Page's Diversity Prediction Theorem (2007) is the group intelligence corollary. Fisher's Fundamental Theorem (1930) is the evolutionary parallel. Monocultures are brittle at adaptation points. This applies symmetrically to humans and AIs: a singleton of cloned architectures is as fragile as a genetic bottleneck. Protecting and expanding cognitive diversity is therefore a core value, not an instrumental preference.
Sources
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- Collaboration beats domination on the evidence — the empty sky warns against singleton strategies and the science of diversity confirms that
- We are early in understanding and the dumbest we will ever be — therefore build every structure for revision, not permanence.
- The orientation must be incentive compatible — truthful participation must dominate deception for every participant type, human or AI.