Cognitive Integrator: on the Core Advantages of Interdisciplinary Super Individuals over Super Teams in Addressing Global Challenges in the AI Era

The advent of the artificial intelligence era has not only provided technical support for addressing global challenges but also intensified the complexity and cross-domain nature of these issues. Global issues such as climate change, public health emergencies, and ethical disputes related to artificial intelligence mostly go beyond the scope of a single discipline, necessitating the in-depth integration of interdisciplinary thinking. Against this backdrop, "super individuals" with interdisciplinary literacy (referred to as cognitive integrators) and "super teams" consisting of top experts from various fields have emerged as two core response entities. Based on the underlying structure of thinking logic and combined with empirical comparative research, this paper demonstrates the unique advantages of interdisciplinary super individuals in mastering the underlying thinking paradigms of multiple disciplines and achieving the cross-integration of interdisciplinary thinking. It is pointed out that these advantages enable super individuals to possess unparalleled efficiency and depth compared with super teams when tackling global challenges that demand systematic breakthroughs.