Imagine all the world's innovations, past and present, harvested by the tech giants, such as Google, Meta and OpenAI, and made accessible to the users of GenAI through prompting. This may not be that far-fetched as these companies not only use web crawlers to pull texts and images from the internet but also buy old archives and rare books from publishers and antiquarian booksellers. What then would making available to the public ready-made or off-the-peg innovations mean for developing problem-solving skills? That is, overly dependence on GenAI might reduce cognitive effort and so discourage independent and critical thinking necessary for finding ethical and sustainable solutions for the many complex problems facing humanity.
