I skimmed through sections 4 & 5, optimization processing was difficult to understand.
When I was in elementary school, I remember pitying the mentally disabled children, knowing their financial success was destined, so I connected with the g-factor definition. I really think general intelligence is more of a sense of all clusters awareness, whether it be social or cognitive. I've met tons of great students in Math courses who simply cannot converse with the general public. I've also met tons of people on the streets of my city who would have a difficult time understanding high school algebra.
As for Section 5, I do think the rise of AI over humanity is completely in our grasp. I really should take a course on the subject before I sound like the people that I'm criticizing for ignorance, but from a general perspective, I cannot see it outside of our control. As Eliezer said, we can make predictions, but only time will clear the fog.
But that's not people's fault. Companies only say AI if they mean deep learning. I've yet to hear a company advertising AI if they accomplished it with a linear regression. Maybe experts should stop talking about AI and use specific terms instead (Deep Learning in the case of this article).
> I can't even skim through the news without hearing Elon Musk and Steven Hawking ignorantly claim AI could potentially takeover humanity.
Have you considered that their claims may not in fact be ignorant, just the reporting around them? For some details perhaps you would start with this primer from a decade ago, section 4 & 5 if you're in a hurry: http://intelligence.org/files/AIPosNegFactor.pdf
Or if you want a professor's opinion, from one of the co-authors to the previously mentioned AI:AMA check out some of the linked pointers on his home page: http://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~russell/