My general thought (as a layman) is that there are currently thousands of really smart people looking for that new approach. The researchers in the field is saturated, with many who in other times would have been physicists or chemists or mathematicians now focusing on ML.

As long as there is a will from industry to pay, they will continue looking. And there are so many incredibly valuable low hanging fruit that are more engineering challenges currently, that I don't think overall funding for research in the field will dry up anytime soon.