The scenario I fear is a "selectively general" model that can successfully destroy the field I'm in but keep others alive for much longer, but not long enough for me to pivot into them before actually general intelligence.
If you want to work in computing, then make it happen! Use the tools available and make great stuff. Your computing experience will be different from when I graduated from college 25 years ago, but my experience with computers was far different from my Dad's. Things change. Automation changes jobs. So far, it's been pretty good.
It's powerful and world changing but it's also terrible overhyped at the moment.
It's a massive bubble, and things like these "benchmarks" are all part of the hype game. Is the tech cool and useful? For sure, but anyone trying to tell you this benchmark is in any way proof of AGI and will replace everyone is either an idiot or more likely has a vested interest in you believing them. OpenAI's whole marketing shtick is to scare people into thinking their next model is "too dangerous" to be released thus driving up hype, only to release it anyway and for it to fall flat on its face.
Also, if there's any jobs LLMs can replace right now, it's the useless managerial and C-suite, not the people doing the actual work. If these people weren't charlatans they'd be the first ones to go while pushing this on everyone else.
1) Just give up computing entirely, the field I've been dreaming about since childhood. Perhaps if I immiserate myself with a dry regulated engineering field or trade I would perhaps survive to recursive self-improvement, but if anything the length it takes to pivot (I am a Junior in College that has already done probably 3/4th of my CS credits) means I probably couldn't get any foothold until all jobs are irrelevant and I've wasted more money.
2) Hard pivot into automation, AI my entire workflow, figure out how to use the bleeding edge of LLMs. Somehow. Even though I have no drive to learn LLMs and no practical project ideas with LLMs. And then I'd have to deal with the moral burden that I'm inflicting unfathomable hurt on others until recursive self-improvement, and after that it's simply a wildcard on what will happen with the monster I create.
It's like I'm suffocating constantly. The most I can do to "cope" is hold on to my (admittedly weak) faith in Christ, which provides me peace knowing that there is some eternal joy beyond the chaos here. I'm still just as lost as you.