There was an article on Rudi Mandl who pestered Einstein into working on gravitational lensing.

This happened because Rudi was persistent and Einstein was kind enough.

In future, citizen scientists have a chance to work on their ideas using AI, eventhough they don't have the deep domain skills. Of course, an expert would still need to review it as usual. But it is a useful tool to democratize science further.

https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/context/amateur-who-helped-...