Impressive post, so many details. I could only understand some parts of it, but I think this article will probably be a reference for future graphics API.
I think it's fair to say that for most gamers, Vulkan/DX12 hasn't really been a net positive, the PSO problem affected many popular games and while Vulkan has been trying to improve, WebGPU is tricky as it has is roots on the first versions of Vulkan.
Perhaps it was a bad idea to go all in to a low level API that exposes many details when the hardware underneath is evolving so fast. Maybe CUDA, as the post says in some places, with its more generic computing support is the right way after all.
Yes, an amazing and detailed post, enjoyed all of it. In AI, it is common to use jit compilers (pytorch, jax, warp, triton, taichi, ...) that compile to cuda (or rocm, cpu, tpu, ...). You could write renderers like that, rasterizers or raytracers.
For example: https://github.com/StafaH/mujoco_warp/blob/render_context/mu...
(A new simple raytracer that compiles to cuda, used for robotics reinforcement learning, renders at up to 1 million fps at low resolution, 64x64, with textures, shadows)