This is obviously a rubbish comment, but nevertheless it raises an interesting point. Deep learning has entered a phase where, due to the excellent tooling (PyTorch, TensorFlow etc) and freely available data, there is a massive ingress of new poeple into the field. This has had a variety of effects, many of which are not necessarily beneficial to progress. There is so much noise and hype that it is difficult to do good work in the first place, and then be recognised for it. Unsurprisingly, rumours about massive salaries at FAANG, everyone trying to start AI companies, and a torrent of dubious quality research flooding conferences retard real progress.

I suspect that there is some optimal mix of making a field accessible and attracting good people to it. If it is too inaccessible, then progress is too slow. It it is too accessible, then it gets flooded. Most scientific fields exist on the inaccessible spectrum. It is relevant to note that many amazing discoveries (including the foundations of deep learning for example) were made when the field was obscure.

So to answer your comment, a scientific field doesn't owe you anything, and in fact, is probably better served by not making it too easy for you to get involved.