Graphics Programmer here.

More likely you would just write data to a buffer (basically an array of whatever element type you want) rather than a render target and then read it back to the cpu. Dx, vulkan, etc. all have APIs to upload / download to / from the GPU quite easily, and CUDA makes it even easier, so a simple compute shader or CUDA kernel that writes to a buffer would make the most sense for general purpose computation like an advent of code problem.

As a graphics programmer in the games industry, it’s always exciting to me when people discover how much fun all this stuff is

This.

I ask my boss about project-wide stuff that might impact me and my team, discuss strategy / priorities / roadmaps, ask them to weigh in on anything where I need project leadership to help resolve an issue, and any perfunctory “goals” stuff (I hate it so much haha)