Note that he didn't say anything about the point you made : a possible change in common sense systems being more tractable to build. That'd have been fascinating. He just said something old and techcrunch made it into a headline.

Love your point about hawking. I treat that as pure entertainment but since the general population treats hawking with high regard (well deserved) his opinions about things he doesn't know much about also carry weight in shaping public perception.

As far as speculating on how scary an AI driven future can be, a filmmaker in the 60s or a high school student today can do as compelling a job as Hawking.