Some great computer scientists and AI pioneers, for instance Terry Winograd, turned to philosophy to look for solutions to some untractable technical problems.

Some philosophers like Bertrand Russell initiated some of the deepest scientific questions. And it's still philosophy (in the figure of Karl Popper) that defined what makes science. Philosophy is the meta-science par excellence.

Apparently you had some bad luck, by discovering philosophy from a poor professor. I had the luck to discover philosophy through some deeply interesting professors, even though I could deeply disagree with them (my first professor of philosophy even was a priest, eeek). I never stopped studying philosophy ever since I was 16, and I probably never will.