I reached the same conclusion but was actually happy about it. When I just started working on neural networks I had almost no competition. Then starting from ~2

I reached the same conclusion but was actually happy about it. When I just started working on neural networks I had almost no competition. Then starting from ~2015 suddenly everybody did neural networks, but all backprop. Right now almost nobody can work on backprop anymore because to improve the status quo you need massive budgets. So I can finally work in peace again on other more obscure neural networks that are way more fun in my opinion. The work is more creative than just tweaking backprop a bit more.