Is machine learning research worth it for now? [D]

Summary

I am a scientist who just applied machine learning to my research (JEPA/Representation/Geometric branch) and it did wonder! Allowed me to see so many papers that I am still struggling to write up. From what I see, there are clearly a million possibilities not done yet, e.g., industrial data, patterns in nature, etc. Why is the job perspective so pessimistic? We clearly have problems unsolved, and for many, the potential of ML will be proven for sure. We also have money (according to the news), a

SpinGraph analysis pending — check back after processing.

• Why I built a proactive context curator instead of a compactor — and what I got wrong for three months [P]
• Is Intrinsic Motivation a Viable PhD Topic in 2026? [D]
• Question regarding Xournal++ and software 4 taking university notes during class [D]
• ECCV travel support program [D]
• Competence Gate: gating tool-use on a small model's internal confidence signal instead of its verbalised one — Qwen3.5-4B, open weights [P]
• I built a open source neural network shape validator [P]