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A proof would likely involve novel techniques and open up new areas of research.

There are a bunch of major assumptions which are not rigorously proven, but generally assumed (hence assumption) to be correct, frequently backed up by a large body of heuristic evidence.

P!=NP is one of them.

That's like saying no one is interested in a solution to the Riemann Zeta Hypothesis. It's thought to be true, and mathematics have been derived from its assumed truth, but there is still major interest in proving it to be true.

The difference is that if Riemann Zeta is incorrect, many theorems that are based on the hypothesis being correct will also be invalidated. Whereas assuming P != NP is limited to a relatively small area of complexity theory. I think a much more equivalent conjecture in complexity theory would be the unique games conjecture. Because the unique games conjecture already provides certain problems to be completely characterized (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unique_games_conjecture#Releva...). Thus, proving this to be true kind of closes the chapter on many problems. Whereas proving P != NP true still leaves many gaps open.