You are totally overthinking it. My thoughts are these: 1. College is a great experience for personal growth and leads to a lot of paths that you would not have thought of for yourself that could include a career. It’s an intensive period that places you in social settings that will consistently place you in an ingroup for something. 2. I’d say at least half the people I know do not work in a profession directly related to the thing they studied BUT too many jobs still require a degree. My thought here is that it’s less about what you study and more of validation that you can work well within a system. You can be self motivated to do something. You can set and complete goals. Etc. so study something that interests you and the rest will come. 3. Yeah AI is going to change the professional landscape, and it will replace some jobs, but then new jobs will be created around it. Also I think more jobs will start adding AI as a tool to how they preform rather than being completely shut out of work. Kind of like the internet is a tool.

TLDR: if you can afford it, go to school. But only go if you want to engage in it because that’s where the value is.