As a former physics faculty member with a PhD in philosophy of physics who also is very interested in cognition and artificial intelligence, I am happy to call this one a draw. Quantum mechanics in particular tells us that the metaphysics of the world isn’t at all like what we might have expected. On the other hand, one of the things physics hasn’t been helpful at is the hard problem of conscious or even explaining much about mental supervenience on the physical works at all. Best we get is elder statesmen physicists making shaky speculations that basically physics must have key gaps (sorry, Roger). Basically the two key questions are what are we and what is the world. So I think we can put physics and AI on par. In terms of actually progress and what would be a thrilling career if you’re a teen: I grew up completely drawn in by the “any day now” theory of everything excitement. I was mentored by John Wheeler at Princeton. It was very promising! But, well, it’s turned out to be sort of a fizzle. @skdh has a lot to say about that (and QM!). Now I look back and one of the most exciting things I saw was 1988 or so this guy I don’t know was so famous then proving that quantum computers are still limited to the scope of lambda calculus / Turing computable functions. As a way of exploring the Many Worlds Interpretation. That Wheeler had helped on. Now we all know @DavidDeutschOxf but I think I was in the first 1000 to stumble upon that paper. Speaking of stumble upon, I left all that for technology entrepreneurship and I’d argue that the intersection of that and physics and AI is probably the hat trick for profound and fun!